


Desperately Seeking

by RoxanneTucker



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Olicity Fans I Promise It Will Be Okay, Real Life, Sexual Fantasy, Widowed, You'll Wish You Were Her, romantic fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:36:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8180033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoxanneTucker/pseuds/RoxanneTucker
Summary: An erotic romance about an attractive, young widow who places a personal ad for occasional companionship and has the ad answered by The Arrow's Oliver Queen.





	1. First Date

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Season 2. If you don't remember what happened way back then, please check out Chapter 7: Arrow: A Primer.
> 
> Featured read in USA Today's Happily Ever After romance book blog: http://www.usatoday.com/story/happyeverafter/2015/02/17/denny-bryce-fan-fiction-fanfic-arrow-buffy-anna-todd/23564363/

_"Attractive widowed mother of two who never, ever, ever wants to remarry. Seeking attractive 35-50yo man for occasional fun: dinners, live music, dancing, exploring. Sex TBD. Not seeking a relationship, only intelligent mind and good body I can use occasionally. We will always go Dutch. We will never discuss our pasts."_

Julianne sat at the candlelit dinner table and spun her wedding ring round and round on her ring finger with her thumb. She'd considered leaving it in her jewelry box. But she realized that would only help Oliver feel comfortable. She didn't want him comfortable. If she decided to stay beyond the five-second inspection to get her first look at him, the amount of time she needed to determine whether she found him physically attractive, then she wanted Oliver to understand the restrictions of this date. Another man already owned all of her. That man was just - unfortunately - no longer around to take care of some pressing physical needs. Or to take her out to dinner.

Julianne touched her exposed shoulder to make sure her bra strap hadn't snuck out from her sleeveless coral dress. Her slim gold watch caught the candlelight.

Oliver was five minutes late.

Wrapping her hands around a cool glass of Pinot Gris, she smiled to herself as she turned to stare out the window, the White House glowing softly among the dark downtown buildings. It seemed Oliver had gone to some trouble to get this table at this intimate and exclusive restaurant in downtown D.C. She'd steeled herself against it when she'd gotten the reservation email, when the host had shown her to the table. She'd accept nothing she didn't want, give away nothing until she was ready. But the joke would be on her if Oliver had decided, in the end, he didn't want to bother with an occasional "whatever" with a 39-year-old widow.

His emails had been gentle, intelligent, ironic without sarcasm, the only one among a stack of deplorable examples of masculinity that she'd responded to. He'd asked if she wanted a photo and she'd said no; hadn't offered to send one either. As much as possible she wanted to get to know him as she'd done the last time she'd dated, in high school and early college before the advent of the Internet allowed people to believe they were falling in love through a screen. So no Googling one "Oliver Queen."

And if he walked into the restaurant and found that the deep brunette waves falling to her shoulders were not to his liking, that the daily 30-minute workouts were not enough to keep the body in the coral dress from showing its proud childbearing work, and that the whisper of lines around her large, dark brown eyes were more apparent than he'd prefer, well he could just turn around and leave. Which he might have already done.

A face appeared in the reflection of the dark window. "Julianne?" The voice was soft and deep. And warm.

Cold prickled through Julianne as she turned to look at him. "No," she muttered. He was beautiful. In a flash, she understood he was one of the most gorgeous humans she would ever be fortunate to see. A precisely cut jawline, a slash of cheekbone, thick hair tamed short and piercingly blue eyes. Shoulders, chest, hips in perfect width and proportion in an achingly beautiful grey summer suit. The dark-blond scruff of his jaw only highlighted his perfection. Her fingers tingled to run across it, to touch the fullness of that soft, gentle smile.

"No," she said again, and would have stood if he hadn't pulled out the chair across from her, unbuttoned his jacket, and smoothed down his silky grey tie as he sat, smiling at her.

"There is no way you're 35!" she said.

"I found that qualification in your personal ad ageist," he said, picking up the wine list. "But I decided not to hold it against you."

"Hold it..." she sputtered. She leaned across the table. "I was very specific in my emails that I didn't want to be lied to."

"I've never lied to you." He handed the list to the sommelier who was hovering outside the candlelight and ordered a bottle that made the woman smile with glee. He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the chair arms. "I don't have a wife or a girlfriend, I travel regularly to D.C. to support my company's interests, and I don't have the time or the...bandwidth for a committed relationship."

He leaned forward, setting his arms on the table. He laid masculine hands that had seen sun and tough work against the white linen, inches from her smaller hands, her nails cut short and painted with clear polish. He caught her with those ocean blue eyes. "And I'm a little lonely, too."

Gently, he eased back into his seat and picked up his menu, shifting his eyes to it. Julianne studied him for a second longer before she leaned back and picked up her menu, too. For a few quiet moments, she read about the entrees and didn't process a word.

She put down her menu. "So how old are you?"

"I'll be 30 in May."

She picked up her half-full wineglass and finished it off. "Well, I'll be 40 in September."

He smiled at her over his menu. "You've made that clear. Would you like me to order for you?"

She could fall into those blue eyes and never come out, just bathe in their fascinating warmth and intelligence. The whole point of this reckless expedition, of exposing herself to strangers, was to get what she needed without giving anything at all. Without losing anything, either.

But he was a little lonely, too.

"Yes, please. Just order for two."

\----------

Julianne had worried that small talk could become absolutely tiny when you took "the past" off the table as a conversation topic. But she and Oliver filled the time while they waited for their meal comparing and sharing their favorite movies, music, and television shows. She was pleasantly surprised. She and her husband had joked that they'd built the foundation of their relationship on their mutual love of pop culture. And although Oliver was ten years younger than her, he seemed to share her same knowledge base, no more aware or interested than she in the trends that happened during the years when her time was consumed with childrearing. Debating the merits of Star Trek: Next Gen over the original Star Trek made the handsome face that smiled at her through the candlelight seem far less intimidating.

But the food had arrived and now there was no talking at all.

Julianne closed her eyes and moaned as she bit into a succulent bite of swordfish dripping with a beurre blanc sauce.

She heard a soft chuckle. "I'm glad you like to eat."

She covered her mouth and opened her eyes. "Did I make that sound outloud?"

He grinned at her as his knife and fork hovered over his glistening steak. "Every single one."

Julianne wiped her mouth with her napkin and placed it precisely back in her lap. "I'm not the kind of woman who orders a salad and then picks at it. If that's what you're looking for then..."

"No, no," he laughed, digging back into his plate-sized portion of meat. "I meant what I said. I'm glad you like to eat. I've dated those salad pickers; I know what an evening with them is like."

She eyed him before picking up her fork and dragging it through the light and creamy sauce. She was more curious about him than she wanted to be.

"What is an evening with those women like?" she asked. She imagined he could have his pick of towering, model-thin salad pickers.

"Monotonous."

She dropped her fork to lean back in her seat. "Really." She crossed her arms. "You're saying when you've got one of those thin-waisted, big-breasted, empty-headed..."

An almost-grin lit his whole face. "Now who's making assumptions."

"...Pieces of arm candy sitting across from you, you're just wishing she would tuck into a Big Mac."

He popped a delicately built concoction of asparagus, mashed potato and steak into his mouth and chewed. "I'm wishing Ms. Salad Picker would enjoy herself. I'm wishing she would take off her mask." He swallowed and met her eyes. "A woman who likes to eat ... she has no mask. She's not worried about what I see or what the waiter sees or what some stranger across the room sees."

His eyes were a sparkling blue in the candlelight. "She's willing to accept pleasure. A phenomenal meal. A great glass of wine. The fascinating conversation of her smoking-hot companion." He lured a grudging grin from her. "A woman who likes to eat is wise enough to know that the sweet things in life are fleeting and confident enough to embrace them before they slip away."

Julianne tore her eyes away from his and ran her finger around the rim of her glass. He had no idea what he was talking about. She'd only recently started to feel free of the soft grey sheet of mourning that had covered most of her days. How could she embrace the sweet things in life when her husband no longer could? Oliver Queen had no idea what he was talking about, was just giving her a line that was probably nothing but sexual innuendo. She's willing to accept pleasure, indeed.

But her husband had always appreciated her loud, loud laugh.

"Please keep enjoying your swordfish," Oliver said quietly. "I didn't mean to make you self-conscious."

She picked up her fork.

"I'll keep talking to cover your yummy sounds."

He was as bad as some boy on the playground pulling her braids! She raised her eyes, ready to tear into him, but he smiled at her with so much tease, as if they were lifelong friends, that she could only cover up a laugh and shake her head at him. He looked loose and carefree, like a man without a concern in the world.

Why was this ideal specimen of a man - charming, intelligent, young, obviously wealthy - spending an evening with a lonely widow?

"So what's your excuse for liking food so much?" she said, motioning with her fork at his plate. "I can't imagine that the sweet things in life get past you very often."

Oliver's bobble of hesitation as he reached for his wine glass was brief, barely noticeable. His face settled into that almost-smile as he picked up his glass and looked at her. "I'm the head of the largest company in Starling City. So moments like this can be rare."

Wait... What?!

"Moments without conflict."

Was he pulling her leg? Why was the head of a major company...

"With a beautiful and interesting woman."

Queen? As in Queen Consolidated?!

"And great food — I haven't always had the...time....to enjoy it, so now I savor it every chance I get. Which is why I'm glad you like to eat. I'm going to take you to every farmers market and food truck and five-star dining experience D.C. has to offer. Your 'man for occasional fun' is going to take wine-ing and dine-ing you to the next level. They'll write our adventures in the stars."

Julianne's head was spinning. "Woah, cowboy, I'm not even sure we're going to see each other again. I don't know if my checkbook can keep up with you. I know my waistline can't."

His grin grew to something wolfish, a wicked promise gleaming through his dark scruff. "I didn't notice any problem with your waistline."

"You haven't seen my waistline," she hissed.

"I watched you as you walked to the ladies room. I figured I might as well enjoy the view, since every other man in this room was."

She hadn't felt the eyes of every man on her when an attack of nerves had forced her to check her hair and lipstick. But she'd felt his.

"You're trying to distract me," she sputtered. "You're the head of Queen Consolidated?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't think that would be important to mention?"

"I'm mentioning it now. I thought you didn't want to discuss our pasts."

"Queen Consolidated is your past, your future, your universe. It's named after you!"

She saw his strong hand clench around the wine stem. "It's named after my father. It was his passion. I'm just trying to keep it from collapsing."

"Oh sure, the trials and tribulations of running a Fortune 200 company." She heard the nastiness in her voice. "You don't call them lies, but I think the holes in your emails have been pretty huge omissions."

"Most women don't look at dating a CEO as a bad thing." Those warm blue eyes were turning icy.

"We wouldn't have been dating. We would have been going out on the occasional date. And I don't want from you what most women want."

"Exactly! Why do you think I answered your ad?" Mr. Cool had raised his voice, drawing the attention of nearby diners.

His exasperation reminded her that two people were involved in this transaction. She'd forgotten that he would have his own reasons and desires for this unconventional relationship. She'd reasoned that a few decent men would answer the ad because they were too busy for the rigamarole of a girlfriend. But she figured those men would be soft-around-the-middle divorced men. Not this. Not Oliver Queen. What had happened to him to make a night out with her seem desirable?

She hardened herself against her curiosity. This wasn't about what he wanted; she wasn't here to help him. This had to be about her, about getting without giving. The moment she made a man's needs and wants a priority was the second that she was truly unfaithful to her husband.

"No," she said. "This is not what I want. If I'd known who you were, I never would have agreed to this dinner. I want ... someone mild mannered. With a normal job. Who just wants some occasional fun."

"Do you know why you use such lifeless words when you describe your ideal man?" His almost-grin had returned. But it was cold and hard. "Because he doesn't exist. No man is as shapeless and malleable as you want. Which means you'll never have to start on this date-and-fuck adventure you've crafted for yourself."

Julianne refused to be stunned. With a snap of her linen napkin, she dabbed at the corner of her mouth and scooted her seat back. She stood up and grabbed her clutch.

"Julianne..."

"You have a nice night, Mr. Queen," she said, acidly sweet as she placed her napkin on her empty plate. "Don't contact me again."

"Julianne!"

Fury floated her through the restaurant and out the large, gold-trimmed doors. She asked the tuxedoed valet for a taxi and then pressed her fingers against her trembling chin.

This, this is why she'd resisted her needs for so long. The loneliness, the physical cravings, the simple desire for a little adult flirting, they'd become nails hammering at any pleasure she could get out of life. She'd thought she'd found the perfect solution, a way to get what she needed without interfering in her life. But this, this drama and chaos, this was exactly what she'd wanted to avoid. Not even her carefully structured ad had worked. She would take it down and wear her widow's weeds and buy an enormous vibrator. Never again would she take this risk with a man.

"Julianne!" Oliver burst out of the restaurant just as the cab pulled up. "Julianne please give me a minute."

She hurried to the taxi as the valet reached for the door.

Oliver spoke from behind her. "Raul, I'll give you two hundred dollars if you leave that door closed."

Julianne gasped in shock and turned to glare at Oliver. 

"I'm sorry," he said. "Give me five minutes."

A step from the cab, Julianne turned to the valet. Raul's hand clenched on the handle. Then, with an apologetic shrug, he let go.

"He's a nice guy, ma'am," he said as he tapped the top of the car. Julianne watched her cab take off down Pennsylvania Avenue. "I'd take a listen to what he has to say."

Rigid with fury, she turned to face Oliver. With one hand, he motioned down the street. With the other, he slipped two crisp $100 bills to Raul.

He was the kind of man who walked around with $100 bills in his pocket. He was also the kind of man who remembered the name of a valet.

They began to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, Julianne stiff with her purse clutched against her, Oliver with his hands in his pants pockets. During the day, these streets bustled with lobbyists and policy makers and attorneys trying to get a finger hold in the most powerful city in the world. But at night, the streets were quiet, filled only by the occasional street lamps glowing against the Federal town homes and gleaming office buildings.

"I'm sorry," he began, his voice a soft rumble next to her. "I punched so far below the belt that I'm ashamed of myself. I want this to work with us and I panicked. I struck out like a little kid trying to hold onto his candy."

His revealing, unflattering self-assessment was so honest that it unnerved her and took half the steam out of her mad. She'd planned on not saying a word or giving him an inch. But now...

"Do you really think that?" she asked as her delicate gold heels tapped against the pavement. "That I'm just...looking to get laid by strangers?"

"No! I could kick myself for putting that thought in your mind."

"And the rest of it? That I'm looking for someone so colorless that I'll never have to worry about finding him?"

He stopped and touched her bare elbow, making her stop just outside the light of a street lamp. They stood in front of a shadowed four-story Georgian town home that had been transformed into law offices. She could smell the sweet scent of the flowers in the window boxes.

Oliver dropped his hand as he moved to face her, but she could still feel the heat of his fingers on her cool skin.

"I know there's a reason you placed that ad," he said, stepping closer to her. "But you have to remember that there's a reason I answered it. And the fact that we don't have to discuss those reasons is one of the main ones."

He had his own secrets, his own wounds and hurts. Of course he did. Why would any man answer that ad who didn't? Standing in the shadows with him, surrounded by the scent of summer flowers and the warm, clean freshness of skin, the breadth of his chest and shoulders making her feel petite and delicate, Julianne knew she was losing.

"But you're a 29-year-old tycoon," she whispered. "I'm a 39-year-old mom. What in the world are we going to talk about?"

This time, when his warm callused hands gently held her elbows, he didn't let go. "It's what we don't have to talk about. There's so much I don't want to discuss, to think about. Back there, in Starling City, that's all I do, talk and think and react. Here, right now, it's quiet. You're my quiet. You're my reprieve."

Julianne could feel herself trembling. She couldn't look above his Adam's apple moving in his tanned throat. He towered over her and she could feel the heat of him through her flimsy coral dress.

"But there is one thing we have to test," he murmured. He stepped backwards, closer into the shadows of the law office, and gently pulled her with him. "I don't think you placed that ad to get laid. But I think physical compatibility was something you hoped for."

His hands firmed on her arms, pulled her closer until his unbuttoned suit jacket brushed against her quivering stomach. His breath, warm and wine rich, whispered against her cheek. "We need to find out if you could want me."

The touch of his lips against hers was soft and undemanding, a gentle press, the slightest movement. But it was anything but simple. Julianne's head whirled at the heat of him, the scent of him, the scrape of scruff against her chin. She gasped, feeling the shock of his kiss like a finger sweep down her spine.

Oliver accepted that, her open mouth, and touched inside her, his tongue tasting her lower lip, scraping her upper teeth, teasing her passive tongue until it answered. Still held by her elbows, Julianne reached out to clutch his suit jacket, kept herself upright by clutching his lapels.

The moan she gave was out of her control and Oliver rewarded her by letting go of her elbows and sliding his hands around the waist he'd admired, pulling her gently against his body.

He was hard and dense and muscular in a way that she never imagined was real, that surely was only light-sculpted and Photoshopped in men's fitness magazines. And he was hard. Hard and elegantly thick and long.

He kissed like he had all day with her lips, that inside her mouth was the only place he wanted to be. He was gentle and persuasive, soft, exploratory, his tongue taking its time to turn her inside out.

But he didn't have her fooled. She had his ticket. He was no gentleman. This restrained kiss, this otherworldly body, they were the tools of a warrior, someone who had finely honed all of his tools to get what he wanted and knew precisely how to use them. He would cut her into a million pieces if she spent too much time with him, if she tried to pursue some kind of casual date-and-sex relationship with him.

But once. Just once she could have sex with this man. A night of sex with this fantasy lover? That could probably get her through the rest of her life of abstinence. Not tonight. The boys were going to be home from their various Friday night activities soon, and would wonder where she was. But the next date. One more night with Oliver Queen. And then she'd never see him again. How fortunate she would be to know it was the last time she would have sex, to be able to remember and savor every moment. She hadn't been so lucky the last time she'd made love to her husband.

Oliver's lips slipped to the corner of her mouth, where he kissed her. Sipped. His hand slid up her back. "Why are you crying?"

"Am I?" Julianne let go of his lapel to raise her hand to her cheek. Indeed, there were tears. "I had no idea."

Oliver kept her sheltered close to him, wouldn't let her pull away. "Have you been kissed since your husband passed away?" He spoke into her hair.

Julianne would be honest. She was going to sleep with him. She could be honest for one more date. "No." She let her head rest against his neck, took in the incredible scent of him.

"How was it?"

The question startled a teary laugh out of her. He could have gone so maudlin. She was ready to go there, ready to have a good cry over the lost fidelity of her lips. Instead, he made it about two unattached adults sharing a kiss in the dark, something that happened every second of every day without the world falling apart.

And her lips had gone untouched for three years.

She leaned back, his hands sliding loosely to her waist but not letting go, and glared up at him. "I'm pretty sure you know how it went."

"I'm fragile," he declared. "My ego needs constant bolstering." His hands firmed on her waist. "Do you want me?"

This time, the kiss was on her terms. She took that perfect jaw into her hands and luxuriated in the scruff dragging across her sensitive palms. The muscles in his neck where she clenched were strong, and the hair at his nape was thick and silky. The lips that she stood on tiptoes to reach were firm and the puff of excited breath against her mouth was spicy and warm. She tasted and explored that fascinating mouth with her tongue, and he let her as he held her, then rigidly held her, then, just for a moment, gripped her by the hips and pulled her against his body for a few rocking pulses that enflamed and did nothing to satisfy.

Yes, she wanted him, she said quietly as she broke from his hold and stepped back from him.

The walk back to the restaurant was quiet, and Oliver insisted on giving her his car and driver for the ride back to the suburbs. He needed the walk, he told her with a devilish glint in his eye.

She agreed to meet him the next time he was in D.C.


	2. Second Date

So far, nothing this evening had gone as Julianne planned. She wanted to wear a slinky, silk, grey dress she'd specifically bought to seduce Oliver Queen. He suggested she wear jeans. She wanted to take him to a new Argentinian steak house where the lights were low, the wine was rich, and filmy curtains created alcoves for romance. He'd pointed out that in her first email, she said she didn't want to spend every date at a restaurant. She'd reserved a room in an intimate boutique hotel just steps from the Argentinian restaurant.

But as she stepped out of Oliver's rented BMW into a gravel parking lot near the Chesapeake Bay, the loud sounds of honky tonk coming from the squat, neon-strewn building that people in cowboy hats were streaming into, she realized it was going to take them an hour to drive back to civilization. How in the hell was she going to finesse him up to a hotel room without just saying, "I've got a key. Let's go do it."

About the only thing that had gone right tonight was the stunned look on Oliver's face when he picked her up. He wanted jeans? She'd given him jeans, skin tight and curvy and expensively faded, paired with tiny kitten heels and a rose, rough-silk tank top that floated over her bare breasts and exposed her back. Big hoops, softly curled hair, and a slick of glistening gloss on her lips made her look like a porno version of herself. She would never have left the house that way if the boys hadn't been at summer camp.

But as she turned to see Oliver's hot blue eyes wander over her body as he stepped out of the driver seat, she was so glad she had.

"What are we doing here?" she asked as they met at the front of the car. He didn't answer. She could have snapped, "Eyes up here," understanding the way her breasts looked under the silk as she moved toward him. But she didn't. And if he noticed her body's reaction to his gaze in the parking lot light, the pebbling against the silk, he didn't say anything either.

"Oliver?" she said softly, bemused. Gratified.

His eyes finally rose to her face, and if there was any embarrassment there, his dark scruff hid it well. "The month apart made me forget how beautiful you are."

Now it was her turn to be embarrassed. The seductress she'd planned on channeling all night completely lost her cool. She bowed her head, ducked her shoulders. "No...I...you know...pilates. And...I try to watch what I eat and..."

"What about me?" his devilish voice murmured near her ear.

She raised her head, bit her lip. "What about you?"

He splayed his muscular arms. "Don't I look nice?"

Nice?! He looked absolutely disreputable. His dark grey t-shirt showed off a torso that had no right being on a CEO, his worn jeans held on just right to his hips, his brown cowboy boots looked like they'd seen years of hard work. Even his scruff looked darker, more menacing. He'd worn an unstructured black blazer, but now he'd left it in the car. This roughneck with the startlingly sculpted arms standing in a gravel lot couldn't have been any further from the perfectly dressed prince who'd joined her for dinner in an elegant restaurant.

If she was dressed up like a porno queen, he was dressed like her "boom-chicka-bow-bow" wet dream. Come hell or high water, she was getting Oliver Queen into bed tonight. And after she left it tomorrow morning, she would never see him again. It was the course she'd decided on a month ago, and no playful dress-up or astonishing compliment would make her change her mind. If anything, the glow this gorgeous man caused with his unabashed admiration of her multi-decade-old body made her more determined to let him go.

After she had this one last night.

She tapped her chin with a nail painted a pearly rose as she pretended to look him over. "Where do billionaires buy their cowboy boots?"

"At the billionaire store," he said without missing a beat. "They're made out of baby alligators and lined in thousand dollar bills."

She wrinkled her nose. "Must get sweaty."

He scoffed. "Billionaires never sweat." He grabbed her hand and tugged her along with him. "C'mon."

His hand was firm and hot, like holding a brand, and she ran to keep up with his long steps through the gravel. Her thumb skated across a callous so dense that it was smooth like glass. "So we're really doing this," she said as they reached the entrance. Country wailing poured out the door, and a bright neon signed flickered the words "Coyote Country."

Oliver handed a twenty to the bouncer. "You wanted out-of-the-ordinary."

"And this certainly is," she yelled as they stepped through the door and into a wall of sound and sweat and air thick with the smells of cheap beer and cheaper cologne. The squat building was a cavern inside, a huge dance floor filled with men in big belt buckles and women in shirts more revealing than hers doing a complicated line dance. Peanut shells crunched under her heels as they walked toward one of several bars. Beer signs decorated the walls. Another sign -- she hoped Oliver hadn't seen it -- implied that a mechanical bull bucked around the corner.

Oliver found them two stools at the bar. "Are you mad?" he leaned over to ask as she boosted herself up on the cracked pleather seat. He had to lean close to be heard over the music, and the clean, summer scent of his skin filled her head.

She gave an enigmatic smile. "Why would you think I'm mad?" she asked as she motioned for the bartender.

His smile was cautious. "I had the feeling you had something else in mind tonight."

She folded her hands together on the bar stool and leaned towards him, offering him up a view of soft curves and shadows. "It can just as easily happen here," she said. And turned from Oliver's stunned gaze to give a sweet smile to the equally stunned bartender. "We'll take two tequila shots and two Corona chasers."

She rolled her shoulders back and settled into her seat. "Do you know how to two-step?"

"Is it like waltzing?"

She wrinkled her nose as she thought about it. "It is like waltzing. Do you know how to waltz?"

He grinned as the drinks, salt shaker and lime wedges were placed in front of them. "I took cotillion classes when I was ten. Doesn't everyone?"

"No," Julianne laughed. "I learned when I got..."

The smile stuttered on her face. She grabbed a shot glass and tossed the tequila back, without the fixings. The shock of the alcohol caused her tears, she told herself. They had nothing to do with the memory of those awful dance classes she and her husband had giggled their way through to get ready for their wedding dance.

Oliver picked up his shot glass and knocked back his tequila without taking his steady blue-eyed gaze off her. She traced the liquor down the line of his strong, strong throat. He sat down the glass, picked up a Corona bottle, and swiveled on the stool to hand it to her.

His knee gently rested against hers. "How do you know how to two-step?" he asked.

Julianne took a sip of the cool beer. "That question seems to be violating our cardinal rule: We will not discuss the past."

He bumped her knee. "Humor me."

She shrugged. "I lived in Oklahoma for awhile in high school. The dancing was the only thing I liked about that state. The way you're dressed tonight, you look like some of the hellraisers I knew."

"I do?" he grinned.

"And avoided. My dad didn't believe in guns, but he would have chased you off the porch with a shovel."

"Getting beaned with a shovel would have done me good in high school," Oliver said, taking a huge pull on his beer. "Fathers shook my right hand while I was finger-banging their daughters with my left."

Nothing about that statement should have made heat rise like a fuselage between her legs. She grabbed her beer and drooped her eyes to the label she was shearing off.

"I can't believe I said that to you," he murmured close to her, wrapping her in his scent. "I'm sorry."

Swiftly, she raised her head. She was inches away from his blue eyes, that perfect nose, the soft stubble that surrounded those softer lips. She breathed in the tequila spice of his breath. "So you were a bad boy?"

He nodded, an arrested look on his face.

"And now?"

"I'm trying to be a good man."

She leaned closer so that his hard knee, his thick thigh, slid further between her legs. "But not tonight," she said. "Tonight you don't have to be too good, do you?"

His eyes turned smoky as he watched her. "Not if you don't want me to."

She slipped off the stool and between his bent knees, let the tip of her nipples brush his chest, the denim of her hips bump against the inside of his hard thigh. "Just for tonight," she murmured into his ear. "Be that boy who comes to lure me out. But instead of letting my dad chase you away, sneak through my window."

Her hand slid over his thick bicep and down the fascinating muscles and hair of his forearm. Then she grabbed his hand. "Let's go dance."

\----------

She pulled him off the stool and after her a few steps before his brawny forearm wrapped around her waist and hauled her back against his hot, unrelenting body. "Jesus Christ," he breathed into her ear, sending a shock of goosebumps through her. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk in the condition you have me in?"

She wriggled her hips back against him. "I have some idea how hard it is."

His groan was a warm moan of pain in her ear. She slipped out of his hold but continued to pull him onto a corner of the dance floor. Once there, she turned to face him.

The look he gave her was a little dazed. Definitely confused. She didn't respond to it, determined to be the woman who would tempt him into her bed tonight. "Okay, two-stepping is just a little shuffle with a specific rhythm pattern." She showed him the quick, quick, slow, slow step while she put her hand on his muscle-bound shoulder, his hand on her silk-covered waist. The hand that engulfed hers was hot and hard.

They began to move on the wooden floor, just outside the perimeter of the dancing couples as Oliver got the hang of it. The country music they moved to was lively with a dirty twang. Random bar lights illuminated his face and she could see him concentrating as he watched their feet.

Suddenly she was twirled into the main flow of dancers circling the dance floor. "Woah!" she gasped as Oliver strengthened his hold on her waist, adjusted his grip on her hand, and began two-stepping her like a seasoned pro, using slight pressure from his hands and the lightest brush of his thighs to let her know where he wanted her to go. When he twirled her twice in a row then settled them effortlessly back into the right rhythm on the right foot, Julianne gasped again.

Without breaking the rhythm, she punched his shoulder. "You big liar! You HAVE two-stepped before."

"Ow!" he grinned. "You must be a big sister. You're so violent."

She punched him again. "I have two younger brothers. And I know how to knee you in the groin, too! Now when did you learn to two-step?"

"Right now! With you!" he said, laughing and not missing a step. "I know how to dance and I...know a little martial arts. I've learned to anticipate my opponent's movements."

"You have?" she asked. Then she swung out while still gripping his hand, switched his hand from her right to her left and then slid back in front of him, nestling her back against his front and her bottom against his groin. She nestled his hand into the curve of her waist, which he gripped. Hard.

They never missed a step, and they continued to move together as one along the dance floor.

"Did you anticipate that?" she murmured over shoulder, where his hot breath hit her bare skin.

Oliver's answer was to nuzzle into her neck, sending a shower of sparks along her nerves with his scruff and soft lips, as he palmed her hip bones and settled her more firmly against him. When they missed the next step and almost stumbled, it was Julianne's fault.

For the next couple of hours, they moved on the crowded floor to the raucous country music. With warm smiles to the tank-topped cocktail waitresses, Oliver kept them stocked in beer. He held the bottle between his knuckles as they danced and put the bottle up to her lips to share, always with a teasing gleam in his eyes. They attempted a couple of the intricate line dances, but as they stumbled together laughing, they decided that not even Oliver's keen senses could help them keep up with Saturday night regulars. Oliver took advantage of the next line dance to whisk her to an empty table and order The Fried Platter, a mess of shrimp, oysters, chicken, pickles, tots and onion rings fried in batter and dumped in a serving tray as large as a trash can lid. After a couple of bites, Julianne threw in the towel. Oliver devoured every ketchup-and-Siriacha dunked morsel.

"You should be the size of a small truck," Julianne teased as Oliver stood, took a final pull on his beer, and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. Grinning, he wrapped a warm arm around Julianne's waist and swept her toward the dance floor as the first strains of a slow song started.

"I told you I like to eat," he said, smiling down at her as her hands enjoyed their trip up his firm chest and around his neck. "You're my vacation. I don't eat like that when I'm at home."

Julianne Schneider, 39-year-old widow, suburban mother of two, was Oliver Queen's vacation. His words thrilled her almost as much as his big hands at her hips, nestling her closer against him. His knee dipped between hers as they moved softly, gently to the music and she let it, let his hard thigh brush at hers. They'd grown comfortable with each other's bodies on this honky-tonk floor, she realized. There was a physicality to Oliver that led her to believe he was a hugger, someone who was comfortable showing his affection with embraces and back slaps and affectionate kisses. He used that same, easy, confident warmth dancing with her tonight and she'd responded to it, forgot about her supposed seduction and just let herself feel good in his hands.

She gently rubbed into the nape of his neck, let the short, dark blond hair tickle her fingers as their bodies moved together. "I've discovered one of your secrets," she said.

The smile on his face didn't move. But those sparkling blue eyes clouded over. Okay. She'd discovered two of his secrets: His smile could become as firm as a mask.

Quickly, before he could assume she knew something she didn't, she gently ran her nails through the dark scruff along his jaw. "I know why you cover this superior jaw with facial hair."

The glow returned to his eyes, but this time it was warmer as her nails continued to caress his face. "Weak chin?" he asked. "Acne scars?"

"Are you kidding?? On a Queen?!" She lifted up on her toes and tilted his head so she could whisper into his ear. "You have dimples."

He stopped dancing as he leaned back, looked at her, and then laughed, a deep, belly laugh like the loosening of a belt. His hands kept hold of her around her waist, kept her close to him. "Dimple. I only have one. Left side. How did you know?"

"You've been laughing and grinning so much tonight I noticed it. It's adorable." She could feel her own grinning dimples peeking out -- she was cursed with two of them -- and she covered her cheeks as she smiled.

"No one's ever called me out on it before."

"Maybe you don't smile enough at home."

He reached for her hand. "Maybe I don't." Slowly he pulled her back into his arms as they found the tempo of the music. Julianne's hands once again caressed his warm, strong neck.

"I don't blame you," she murmured, her head nearly resting against his shoulder. "Dimples don't give you much cred in the board room."

"No, you're right," he chuckled against her ear. "One dimple sighting and they'll strip me of my rights to kick ass."

His arm wrapped around her, eliminating any pretense of space between their bodies, and Julianne let him, let him hold her close as the occasional laugh still trembled in his body. When she'd imagined this night, she imagined it full of seduction and heat and sexual innuendo. She never imagined that it would be filled with laughter. And companionship. She never imagined she would enjoy Oliver Queen's presence, his spirit, and as much as the body it occupied. Had she planned on seeing him after tonight, she would be quite terrified. She'd be pulling -- hard -- on the reins of the fun they were having. She was not allowed to feel this good, this loose and free and appreciated, with another man.

But she had no intention of seeing Oliver Queen again.

She turned her head and inhaled him, his breezy ocean scent mixed with the brine of his clean sweat. She gave a soft kiss to his jaw. "Are you ready to leave?" she breathed against his skin. 

Oliver stopped dancing.

His warms hands slid up her arms, summoning goose bumps, before they gripped her shoulders and gently pulled her back from him. He bent down to look into her eyes, searching her gaze with that soft smile that hid his true emotions.

"If you are."

With a shy smile, Julianne told him she was going to stop by the bathroom and then she would meet him by the door. She tried to walk and not run, but it was hard with her heart pounding in anticipation. She washed her hands in the chipped sink and assessed herself in the bathroom mirror, added a new swipe of gloss, popped a breath mint. Her hair had kept its big curl in the hot bar and, if anything, the sheen of warmth on her skin made her look more luminous. Younger. She faltered at that thought, then squashed it as she replaced the lid to her lip gloss. Oliver Queen wanted her, she mentally told herself in the mirror, her shoulders squared. He'd never hidden his appreciation for her looks or her conversation. And if, once he got under the clothes and makeup, she didn't quite hold up to what he was used to, well, he had the good breeding to keep it to himself. If he never wanted to come back for a second taste, even better.

One taste was all he was going to get.

Feeling bold, defiant, sexy, Julianne stepped out of the bathroom and strutted on kitten heels toward the exit. And stopped short. Oliver was all but blocking the exit, kissing a gorgeous 20-something blond who was painted against him while her friend took pictures.

\----------

Julianne felt her confidence rush down the drain and swirl away.

She pushed into the girl to get out the door, heard a -- "Bitch! Oliver Queen. Oliver!" -- as she squeezed through the door to the outside, into a large crowd waiting to get in. She pressed through beer guts and belt buckles, just wanting to get away. She could call a cab. It was going to be a $400 ride back to the Virginia suburbs. "Julianne," she heard Oliver call urgently in the crowd behind her. She moved faster, began using her elbows. She was a kid of the Nineties. She'd been in mosh pits. Oliver would have been in cotillion class. She could hear her breathing, harsh breaths almost like sobs, pushing out of her as she shoved through, desperate to be free. Oliver was right behind her, she knew it. She couldn't let him touch her.

She surprised herself when she burst through the crowd. Without the press of bodies against her, she stumbled. Fell to her hands and knees.

"Julianne!" 

She'd been correct, he'd been right behind her. His hand gripped her arm. She shook him off, stood on her own, wiped her stinging hands against her jeans as she began to march away, humiliation providing the proper jet fuel.

"Julianne, where are you going?" She kept stomping away.

"Julianne, she was kissing me; I wasn't kissing her back." She said nothing, moving between the lights and shadows of the parking lot. They were beyond the people in a sea of cars.

He gripped her arm and swung her toward him in the narrow lane between two trucks; this time when she tried to shrug him off, his hard, calloused hand did not let go. "I thought you didn't want any drama," he said, lights striking off the hard planes of his face.

"I don't," she shouted back.

"Then why is this the second time in two dates I've chased you."

Her lips quivered open. And then closed. She let out a deep whoosh of a breath and tried to calm her pulse. He was right; she was almost forty-fucking years old. She needed to act like it.

With a soft sweep, Oliver let his hand travel down her naked arm, but he didn't let her go. He loosely manacled her wrist with his thumb and finger as if she might bolt again. "I'm sorry you saw that." At Julianne's humph Oliver amended his words. "I'm sorry that happened; I don't know that woman and she was plastered against me before I knew it. Right about the same time you saw her."

"Why would she do that?" Julianne asked, stepping back from him, crossing her free arm across her body. "And why did she know your name?"

"I'm..." He scrubbed his free hand through his hair, making the well-groomed cut stand on end. She did not want to feel sympathy for him. "I'm a good-looking billionaire under 30. I'm in the occasional Perez Hilton post."

"What?!" Who the hell was Perez Hilton?

"I'm in gossip columns."

"Enough to be recognized by women in the boonies of the Chesapeake Bay? I'd expect a white, male baby boomer with a stock portfolio to be drooling all over you."

He paused a beat, took a short, frustrated breath through his nose. The outside corners of his beautiful eyes sloped down, she noticed for the first time. They could look incredibly sad. Like everything he'd ever wanted was taken away from him. "It doesn't happen often," he said. "But it does happen."

"You get mouth-screwed by strange women?"

He quickly hid his shocked amusement, looking at her cautiously. "No, I get recognized, not...molested."

"What about your ninja-like ability to anticipate your opponents movements?" she asked. The tension in her arm eased; she was no longer pulling away from him. "She couldn't have been that stealthy; she was a big, glowing, beacon of horny."

This time, he twisted his head away to hide his smile. The parking lot light and shadow got caught in his dimple. "I was distracted," he said.

"By what?"

He looked down and lifted her wrist, cradled her hand in his big palm to hold it up to the light. Bits of gravel were still embedded in it, and he gently swiped them away with his calloused thumb. Spots of red lit up her palm, but the skin hadn't broken. He continued to soothe it with soft touches.

"By thoughts of what I was going to do to you when I got you alone."

Just like that, Julianne went boneless. A hot surge of pleasure liquefied her skeleton, but fortunately, Oliver was there to catch her, to shove her two steps back against the nearest truck, to capture her face and claim her mouth.

A black pickup truck radiating summer heat and Oliver Queen pressed against her from thighs to lips were the only things keeping her upright.

The kiss was long and fierce, a press of tongues and lips and teeth that she had no say in, could only accept as he turned her head for access to every corner of her mouth. Those hard hands against her jaw, they were as elegantly savage as the erection pressed between her legs, nudging her to insure she stayed lightheaded. His lips slid away to bite her jaw -- she saw sparks -- before finding a firework-launching spot behind her ear.

"I thought..." He murmured with a deep and husky rasp.

"You thought?" she gasped.

His teeth nipped her earlobe before soothing it. "I thought we were over before we'd begun."

They were. She didn't have to concern herself with the publicity or the occasional maulings -- though she still wanted to find that girl and yank out every blond hair -- because she was never going to see Oliver Queen again. The thought settled her, gave her a shred of control over her rapidly disintegrating body. She forcibly locked out any concern for the -- relief? hope? -- she heard in his voice.

Her hands burrowed under his shirt, finding the incredible divot of muscles at his waist. She traced her nails across them as Oliver worshipped her neck with teeth and tongue. "Where's your car?" she breathed.

He didn't move his lips from her neck as he dug into his jeans pocket, raised his hand and pressed the lock button. The answering beep was only a couple of aisles away. She let Oliver control the stumbling, kiss-laden walk to it, his hands never leaving her body.

In the car, Oliver gave her a final succulent kiss as he buckled her in, then punched the gas as he tore out of the parking lot. Had she been a little less preoccupied, she might have been terrified of his stunt man driving. But as they drove through the dark, the headlights picking up the large oaks that hung over the country road, Julianne was working to bring her breath back under control so she wasn't audibly panting in the elegant BMW. She was trying to bring her pulse back under control as a train of thoughts gathered in her head: This is it. She was going to do it. She was going to have sex with Oliver Queen. She was going to have sex for the first time in three years. She was going to have sex with someone other than her husband.

She didn't like where her train of thoughts was headed.

She unsnapped her seat belt and leaned over the divider, kissed Oliver's jaw as her hand slid over the denim covering his hard thigh. He grabbed her hair to bring her up for a quick, hot kiss while his eyes stayed on the road. Then he pulled away.

"Get back in your belt." His hot blue gaze lit sparks off hers before his eyes returned to the road. "I want to get you back to D.C. in one piece."

She scraped her nails up his thigh. "Why wait?" she breathed against his jaw. "We could start right now."

Right now, her brain demanded. Let's get this over with right now. Before her conscious or guilt could catch up with her. Right now, like ripping off a band-aid. Insertion, penetration, ejaculation. She hoped Oliver had condoms in the glove box.

Her hand slid up his thigh to his prominent erection and squeezed.

"Fuck! Julianne!" Oliver yelled as he slid off the road and braked into a spray of gravel. "You're goddamn lucky there was a shoulder there."

She was immune to his anger as she hoisted herself up over the divider and straddled him, pressed where she was warm and wet against the hard lump of his cock. He groaned the instant before Julianne licked his lips and then slid her tongue inside of him, gripping at his shoulders.

To her shock, he ripped his lips away. "Julianne, wait," he growled.

Wait?! No! It had to be now. With a flick of her forefingers, she slipped the straps of the top off her shoulders and then shimmied, letting the raw silk slide down her torso. Her breasts -- firm, more than a handful, with dark tight nipples -- shivered in the dim glow of the console lights, right in front of his eyes.

She raised his hand to her hot tit, squeezed his fingers around it as she rolled her hips against him.

"Goddamn it," he groaned, shaking off her hand to caress her breast on his own, raising the soft flesh up and leaning forward to give a lick; a wet, thorough suck; his scruff adding sensation to astonishing sensation. Now, her body sighed, shaking into him. It was going to happen now.

Oliver released her breast and pushed her back against the steering wheel hard enough to cause a sharp honk. He leaned into the back seat to grab his coat and threw it across her naked chest before he pulled his hands away from her, gripping his white-knuckled fists near his head like she was radioactive.

Breathing hard, they stared at each other, trying to decipher each other's secrets in the low glow provided by the headlights still striking the oaks outside.

"Julianne, what is going on?"

Her desire washed away in a hot, raw sluice of embarrassment. She thought she'd been seductive. What had he thought?

"I want..."

"Do you?" His words were sharp, his jaw grim. "Because you'd made it very clear in your emails that you weren't going to be rushed into anything, that you wanted to take your time. But tonight...all of tonight..." He said the last words like her behavior tonight -- so different than the first time they'd gone out -- was just dawning on him. "Did you decide after one date that you had to get into my pants?"

She gripped the jacket, rich with his ocean scent, against her chest. "I need..."

"And I want to give it to you," he said, harshly. "But not here. Not like this. Not in a rush like I'm a fucking teenage boy who'll pull out his dick just because you've snapped your fingers."

He was angry; he was putting the two-and-twos together of the night and realizing they didn't add up. She had been manipulating him at times throughout the night. But not to hurt him. Or rather, not thinking it was possible that she could hurt him.

"You don't understand," she said, feeling helpless.

"Explain it to me."

"I can't..." Her fingers fluttered on the lapel of the jacket, where she held it against her naked skin. His strong legs were so warm, supportive under her. "I just want to get this over with. Stop...building up the anticipation. And then, maybe, with the next person --"

"The next person?" His words were lethally quiet in the expensive car.

Julianne closed her eyes and leaned her chin against her chest.

"Were you planning on having sex with me and then...that would be it?"

Julianne's non-answer was Oliver's answer.

She raised her head to find Oliver staring into the blackness outside his driver window. Slowly, she found the straps of her tank top under his jacket and slipped back into them, pulling the shirt up. She moved back across the divider and settled into her seat. She didn't realize she'd taken his jacket with her, kept it over her and nestled her nose into his scent as she leaned against the seat, watching him.

"I've fucked and abandoned so many women," Oliver said in a musing tone. "It's surprising how much it hurts at the thought of it happening to me."

Julianne blinked hard. She was not going to cry.

Oliver turned to look at her, gave that short breath through his nose that Julianne had learned was him settling into himself. Gave her that small smile that was no expression at all. "Why?"

All of this was her fault, from conception to execution. He deserved an honest answer, to look into her face although she wanted to hide herself in her hands.

"Oliver, you're too much--" she began.

"Too what?" he asked, that hateful smile still on his face. "Too selfish? Too serious? Too cold? Don't worry, I've heard them all before."

"No!" She shot a hand out from under his coat to touch him, and then curled her fingers into a fist. She didn't deserve to touch him. "No, you're too good. Too kind, too smart, too funny. Name a 'too' and you're it. You're too much fun, too good of a dancer, too good of a kisser. And let's not forget the obvious three." She counted them off with her fingers. "Too rich, too young and too damn hot. How am I supposed to do this casual thing with you when you're a walking fantasy. Christ, this was supposed to be easy!"

"It is easy," he said, grabbing her hand. Fire lit his eyes and burned away that placid smile. "Compared to what I deal with at home, this is a cake walk."

A little piece of her heart broke at that comment. She squeezed his hand. "Oh, Oliver. You must live among land mines. I don't. I'm a suburban mom and this is an emotional roller coaster that I don't have the strength to ride."

"Sweetie, this is dating."

"That's just it; this wasn't supposed to be dating. This was supposed to be...dinner companions with benefits. But instead, YOU show up. In all your...youness. I can't have sex with you and keep seeing you and stay emotionally unattached. And I can't be emotionally attached. I have two teenage sons and I'm still in love with my husband."

There it was, out in the open, the only time she'd ever said it out loud and the first time she'd said it so boldly to herself. What everyone expected of her, to shape up and get over her husband's too-young heart attack, hadn't happened. Three years later and she was still as desperately in love with him as the last morning she'd kissed him good-bye, the hour before she'd gotten the call that he'd had a massive coronary in stop-and-go traffic. He'd been dead before his car rolled diagonally into a concrete barrier and backed up the Beltway for miles.

This time, when Oliver Queen touched her hand, it was gentle, as if he wished he could wipe away her heartache as easily as the gravel.

"I think, more than a dinner companion or a lover, you need a friend," he said gently. "I know I do." He took a deep breath. "What if we don't have sex?"

Julianne stared at him and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at that completely ludicrous idea.

"I mean, not right away. We can see each other for a few more dates and...do stuff." He shrugged, and in it, she could see the teenage boy he once was, that teenage boy that must have left a graveyard of trampled hearts. "And then, when we do have sex, we'll stop seeing each other."

She huffed a soft laugh. "So you don't mind being used for sex?"

"As long as I'm in on it," he said, his eyes glowing. "As long as I know when the end is coming."

She wiggled her hand free to stroke the scruff of his jaw. "I'm sorry I tried to force the issue. I never thought of myself as...being able to hurt you."

He shrugged again, and though the concealing smile had returned, it wasn't cold.

"So how many more dates?" she asked gently.

"Ten?"

Again, she raised that eyebrow. He'd been stretched out in his seat like platter of yummy through this whole conversation, his hard thighs and ridged stomach and bulging biceps and achingly perfect profile just sitting there, inches from her, like the most succulent meal that she could only see and smell. Never touch. Never taste. She'd barely restrained herself for the last ten minutes. She'd never last ten dates.

"Okay," he amended. "Five."

"Two."

"Jeez, impatient. Three."

She paused a moment. "Okay, three." They looked at each other, smiled, a little goofy, a little embarrassed about how eager they both were. Grown adults and neither of them felt they could wait more than three dates to have sex.

But as Julianne turned to grab her seat belt as Oliver started the car, her smile faltered. Oliver now knew more than anyone else in her life about what she was going through. He was the only person who'd witnessed the messy truth of herself, and not that pleasantly smiling woman the rest of the world wanted to see. And he still accepted her. Still wanted her. And in three more dates, she would force herself to let him go.

She hoped Oliver wouldn't be able to make it back to Washington, D.C., for a long, long time. She wanted the promise of those three dates, of hanging out with the many-layered him and the messy truth of her, to last for months and months.

As they began to drive down the country road in a thought-filled silence, Julianne realized she still didn't understand why Oliver needed these dates. But she was beginning to understand why she did.


	3. Third Date

Oliver Queen walked down the crushed gravel path of the National Mall, no more aware of the brilliant sunset setting the Capital ablaze or the perfect fall weather that had families picnicking in the grass than he was of the puffs of dust soiling his once-gleaming white leather oxfords.

His head was in Starling City, hundreds of miles away.

He was pretty sure he'd convinced the federal regulators he'd spoken to today to give him back control of Queen Consolidated, now that Isabel was dead and her part in Slade's conspiracy to destroy Starling City had been revealed. He had no idea what he was going to do with the company now without his mother's guidance or support. He was, at the end of the day, a CEO without a degree or experience.

His contacts still hadn't located Speedy; it was a daily task to convince himself that his little sister was okay, that Thea was an adult and deserved to get away. She'd buried her mother and discovered her trusted brother had repeatedly lied to her; if she wanted to get lost -- for a time -- then she had the right to. When Laurel had lost all hope, she'd buried herself in pills and drink. Oliver prayed his baby sister was burying herself in nothing other than hot sand and copious umbrella drinks on an exotic beach somewhere. Saying her name in the workout room made Roy disappear for days, gave Oliver one more person to worry about and search for.

At least he'd been able to keep tabs on Laurel: She'd been showing up at the hideout regularly, asking questions Oliver hated answering, wanting to understand his and her sister Sara's metamorphosis into their alter egos. Oliver gave her as much truth as he could stand, and she accepted the hard facts like a dry-eyed warrior. She'd even asked Oliver to work out with her, to show her some of the offensive strikes she'd witnessed her sister pull as the Black Canary.

When Laurel was at the hideout, Felicity stayed hunched over her keyboard, giving only one-word responses. She'd been spending more time in Capital City, and -- to his shame -- he'd recently barked at her about sticking around to do her job. There had been a recent uptick in disappearing homeless teenagers and Diggle was concerned that -- along with the other ills plaguing Starling City -- their home had recently caught the attention of sex slave traffickers. 

"Finding lost teenage girls might be a little more important than hanging out with a guy in a coma," Oliver had yelled at her.

Felicity hadn't gotten outraged. She should have slapped him; he'd earned it. She'd just turned back to her keyboard, her full lower lip trembling, while Diggle had given him that look that said, once again, he'd fallen far short of the man he should have been.

"Javon, stop! Stop!" A sudden shriek of panic snapped Oliver out of his trance. Running past was a little dervish of a boy, laughing over his shoulder at the grey-haired lady chasing him, his chubby legs about five steps from sending him out into rush hour traffic.

Oliver shoved the champagne bottle he was carrying under his arm and, in one quick stride, gently caught the boy by his shoulders and spun him around. The little boy's non-stop legs sent him right back to the lady, who scooped him up into her arms.

"Oh, baby," cried the woman, repeatedly kissing his plush cheek. "You got to listen to Grandma." She raised stricken eyes to Oliver. "Thank you, thank you. What would I have done if you weren't there? You saved him."

Oliver smiled gently. "I'm sure he would have been fine," he said.

"No, no, you were there to save him like an angel sent from heaven." Embarrassed, Oliver awkwardly patted the boy's back. The Arrow's method of crime fighting generally didn't allow him to stick around for thank yous. The kid grinned a cherubic smile up at him, his arms looped around his grandmother's neck. 

"You're even dressed like an angel," the woman said quizzically, her chocolate eyes wandering over him. Oliver looked down at himself and had to grin; he'd completely forgotten that he was dressed head-to-toe in white: white shoes, white linen pants, a tucked in white shirt with an unbuttoned white suede vest and a white kerchief tied at his neck. What a sight he must have made marching down the Mall, dressed like a heaven-sent vaudeville performer with the black scowl of all of his Starling City worries on his face.

He grinned and leaned conspiratorially close to her. "I don't want to mislead you; I'm more of a wolf in sheep's clothing."

She hooted and nodded at the champagne bottle. "And I bet that's just how your lady likes you."

She gave him another sincere thank you, and Oliver patted the little boy again before he wished them both well and turned around to wait for the light to turn green. He leaned his head back to marvel at the Washington Monument looming across the street, a white pillar catching sunset orange against a perfect twilight blue sky. He closed his eyes for a second, savored the soft September breeze, still warm but with a tinge of crisp oncoming fall, against his skin.

It was nice helping people in the daylight. It was nice being just a man -- not Oliver Queen, not the Arrow -- but a man in the right place at the right time who could lend a helping hand. It was nice receiving daylit gratitude, being called an "angel" even, and not being viewed with suspicion and concern. Sure, you can save a city. But every person saved secretly wondered why anyone would spend all their time in a mask prancing around in the dark. When was that freakazoid vigilante going to snap and blow their city all to --

Oliver slammed a gate against those dark thoughts as the light turned green, as pedestrians began to move past him, as he joined their flow and excitement on this beautiful Friday evening. For one night, he could let Starling City be. He'd called an hour ago and Diggle assured him there was no out-of-the-ordinary chatter; the city would still be there in the morning. His grief for his mother; his worry for his sister; his confusing love for two women -- a woman from his past and a woman who wanted to be his future -- they would all be there tomorrow. Let them stay there, he told himself. Tonight, just for a few hours, he would be here. In the shadow of the Washington Monument on a late summer evening. Anticipating the woman who waited for him just beyond the ivory tower.

"Meet me at the base of the Washington Monument at 6:30," her text had said. "Wear white. Bring champagne."

He chuckled as he thought of her not-so-cryptic message as he began to hussle up the grassy hill leading toward the monument, joining others dressed in white and staggering under the weight of picnic baskets and folding chairs and wineglasses. He was pretty sure he knew what he was getting into. He'd gone to something similar beneath the Eiffel Tower during a "leave of absence" from one of the numerous universities he attended; he'd gotten blind drunk and woken up on a park bench in nothing but his silk white boxers.

That idiot wouldn't have looked forward to tonight, wouldn't have taken pleasure at the chill of the champagne bottle in his hand or the burn on his muscles as he crested the hill. Would have taken for granted the awesome sight spread before him: On the lawn beneath the Washington Monument was an acre of white dining tables, white linen and flowers, silver platters and crystal goblets, candleabras already lit, and beautiful people dressed hats-to-heels in white.

That idiot's heart wouldn't have sped up at the sight of her. Lounging in a chair in a demure lace top and a belted, full lace skirt, her dark brown hair pulled back from her face and showing off her elegant cheekbones and delicate neck, Julianne was a haven of calm among people bustling to have their tables perfect for the 6:30 start time.

That idiot -- all he would have missed out on, all the beauty he never would appreciated -- if he'd never gone to the Island.

\----------

Oliver caught Julianne's eye as he wove through harried dinner participants to get to her. She didn't get up; she put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand and grinned at him, her deep, dark eyes gleaming up at him as he marveled over everything she'd accomplished with their dinner table.

A Diner en Blanc -- all-in-white flash-mob dining events held around the world -- required participants to bring their own everything. She had transformed what he could only imagine was a card table under the shining, silken tablecloth into a table fit for Versailles: She'd filled an antique pewter vase with ivory tea roses and baby's breath, lit thick candles and placed a perfect rose in shallow bowls at the top of their three-tier, bone-white china place settings. A silver wine bucket with its own stand waited for the champage, and oysters glistened in a silver platter of crushed ice.

He set the champagne bottle on the table, caught her hand, and pulled her out of the chair and into his arms as her wide, luscious lips startled open in surprise. Which was exactly what he wanted. His tongue found her mouth, tasted its sweetness, its hesitant welcome then open and warm acceptance, as his hand traced the white satin belt around her small waist. He could circle her with an arm and did as he pulled her close to his body, loving the delicate give of her, the plush fullness of her breasts rubbing against him through lace and linen. Those Playboy breasts on a woman so practical, they'd floored him when he'd seen them, made him hard during inconvenient times during the last five weeks.

He had told himself he would wait to touch her. He wanted to dole out their touches so he could stretch out their dates, not snap their tension and turn three more dates into one explosive one. But it had been five weeks. And her demure outfit covering her va-va-voom body, the trouble she'd gone to for him, the happy, open, stomach-warming welcome in her smile, they'd been more than his body could deny. The ease of her was more than he could resist.

He pulled away from her sweet lips, bit at her jaw, pulled her close to murmur into her ear, "Thank you. This looks beautiful. You look beautiful."

He felt her stiffen under his hands at that, draw slightly back from him. "You're welcome. I don't ... I mean. No, you look...stunning." The slight moan when she said it let him know she meant it. But his admiration for her, for her beauty, she was still uncomfortable with. He didn't know what she saw in the mirror, but he knew she feared that he compared her to women his own age. Couldn't she understand that when he was around her -- the clever, funny, prettiness of her that created a pleasant cushion from his real life -- other women never crossed his mind?

Now was not the time to convince her of that. He could convince her later. Back in his hotel room.

He eased his hold on her, slipped his hand down the smooth skin of her arm until he could entwine her fingers. "How did you get all this here?" he asked, directing her attention back to the table.

He felt her backbone firm next to him, that little sassy tilt return to her hips. "After you've organized a birthday scavenger hunt at the National Zoo for a mob of 10-year-old boys, you can do anything. This was cake."

"It's amazing," he said, his eyes catching hers, slowly traveling over her face and hair to admire every detail -- her dark eyes, the flush of color on her high cheekbones, the shiny hair pulled back into a pretty coil, making her look like an olive-complected Audrey Hepburn. She wore a simple pearl in each ear. He wanted to suck one into his mouth. Bite it.

Her lush smile grew softer, a little hesitant. Without looking away, she picked up an artfully folded linen napkin from the table and pressed it against his chest. "You're going to need this," she murmured.

"To wipe away the drool?" He quirked a smile.

"To signal the start of dinner." He looked up and saw that, indeed, diners all around them were raising white napkins over their heads, creating a sea of waving linen against the darkening twilight of the sky. He remembered this -- probably one of his last sentient memories -- from the Paris dinner, but when Julianne shook out her own napkin, stretched her arm overhead to wave it slowly while smiling at him, encouraging him to embrace the silliness as he too raised his, Oliver couldn't remember ever feeling this young and free.

Slowly the napkins came down, and the bustle and clink of diners settling at their tables and serving their meals echoed over the lawn. Oliver moved around to pull out Julianne's chair. "Thank you," she blushed prettily. He watched her as he took his seat and opened the champagne -- She leaned over to rummage beneath the tablecloth, pulled out a thermos and other small containers, uncapped the thermos to pour a steaming white soup into their bowls and then topped the soup with a swirl of bright pesto and olive oil. When she was done with them, the bowls looked they'd come out of a restaurant's kitchen. As she placed the items back under the cloth, Oliver leaned forward to savor the scents in the bowl -- garlic, butter, the toasty scent of beans with the bright herbs of pesto.

He poured champagne for both of them as she waited and then raised his glass. "To you," he said, as the candlelight caught in her glass' bubbles.

She bit her lip at that. "No, to you," she said firmly. She took a neat sip and then sat her glass down without breaking his gaze. "I want to thank you. Even with my...unfortunate displays of dramatics, I've had so much fun with you. I don't think very many men would have been up for any of this, for...me. But you, the second I saw you, you looked so pleased to be here, so excited for this evening. I needed to remember there was joy in life. You've helped me remember."

Oliver was beyond touched; he was floored. He brought joy to someone's life? Him, a dark, brooding, growly-voiced creature of the night? He brought the fun? He felt the speechlessness on his face. He needed to close his mouth.

"Now eat," she ordered, picking up her sterling silver spoon and dropping her eyes to the bowl, saving him from having to respond or, god forbid, breaking into sobs at the table.

He took a cleansing gulp of $200 champagne before he picked up his own spoon. He ladeled up the creamy, white soup, inhaled it as it neared his nose, then spooned it into his mouth.

Wow.

"Wow!" he said out loud. "This is amazing." The soup was rich without being too thick, with enough garlic to give it some bite and enough pesto to give it a zest. "Where did you get it?"

"Get it?" she smiled slowly, wiping at her full lower lip with her napkin. "I made it."

"You mean, people 'make' their own food?" Oliver tilted his head. "Is that what all the machines in my kitchen are for?"

Julianne shrugged. "For either that or storing your shoes."

"No, I keep those in the 'laundry room.'" Oliver gave his words air quotes. "You might have heard of it."

He loved her silly, delighted chuckle as she returned her attention to her soup. Oliver scooped another spoonful and...damn. Yum.

"I mean it, this is great." Oliver was uncouth enough to keep eating as he talked. "Do you like to cook?"

"I do," she said, nodding her head. She placed her spoon down, wrapped her elegant fingers around the crystal stem of her champagne glass. "In fact, I used to love it. I was a caterer."

Oliver watched her lift the glass to those lips, watched the champagne work its way down her long throat. A whisp of hair had come loose from her coil, and it floated against the white lace, against her delicate collarbone.

Oliver knew she liked to cook. He knew she'd gotten a degree in English Literature from the University of Virginia, where she met one Jamison Matthew Schneider. He knew she'd later gone to culinary school and had been a successful caterer in Northern Virginia until Jamison, her husband of 13 years that she called "Jamie," died of a heart attack three years ago. The life insurance Jamie provided had left Julianne and her two sons, 16-year-old Matt and 14-year-old David, well taken care of.

She'd demanded no Googling. But too many people depended on Oliver for him to be cavalier about who he got involved with. He needed to know whether a woman could secretely be working as an assassin, could be trying to seduce him while plotting his murder and the takeover of his company. Experience had taught him that these were the personality 'ticks' of the women he attracted.

He'd seen her ad during a bored limo ride from the D.C. airport; had impusively answered it after one too many bourbons in his hotel room. When that defiant yet proper woman he'd noticed in the ad came with a layer of sweetness, humor and intelligence in her emails, he'd hired a private investigator. In his wall safe at home was photo of Julianne -- a pretty, composed woman at a coffee shop with eyes rich with sorrow -- that had sealed the deal for Oliver. He'd be her attractive man for occasional fun, sex TBD. He didn't want to discuss his past either.

But now Julianne seemed to be breaking her own rule. "I used to love it. I was a caterer." And rather than sending Oliver fleeing, it felt like a gift. He knew what it had taken her to offer this bit of herself; knew she would never have given him a piece of her life buried by sadness if their relationship didn't have an expiration date. He appreciated her limits. He knew all about having to draw a hard line around what was possible and what wasn't. So few people understood that.

A slim manilla folder had told him why Julianne had stopped doing something she loved. It didn't tell him why she started.

"When did you discover you liked cooking?" he asked, tilting his bowl to scrape the last spoonful out of it.

Julianne grinned as she watched him. The move was genuine -- he really didn't want to waste a drop -- but it also helped remove the shadow of memory that her "used to" and "was" brought to her eyes. "In second grade."

"Really?"

"I hated my sack lunches," she said, holding out the platter of oysters to Oliver. He took one, the top glistening with pink granita and tiny flecks of cucumber. "I had bologna or PB&J on white bread every day. The paper bag I carried it in probably had more nutritive value."

Oliver knocked back his oyster and closed his eyes in bliss. It was soft with brine, perfectly meaty and crisp with the tang of grapefruit and cucumber. Julianne picked up her own oyster. "So, sick of hearing me complain, my mom throws open the refrigerator one day and says, 'Have at it.'" Julianne leaned forward. "Which, I've got to tell you, is a brilliant tactic. Your kids bitch and moan, tell them they have the power to make it better. That's your parenting tip for the day."

Oliver grinned as he reached across the table for another oyster. "I'll make sure to jot it down."

"Anyway, I stood in front of the fridge, grabbed some leftover rice, a couple of past-their-prime veggies and a chicken breast, and I made a stir-fry for the next day. When my mom tasted it, she doubled my allowance and put me in charge of the family's lunches." Julianne shot back her oyster in triumph and wiped a tiny glisten of brine from her bottom lip with her thumb.

Oliver would have been happy to lick it away.

As she ducked beneath the tablecloth to bring out their second course, Oliver cleared their bowls and spoons. "Is this meal past-their-prime vegetables and whatever was in the fridge?" he teased.

"Uh, no," she said as she brought out several Tupperware containers. "This is a little more planned out."

"It is?"

Julianne began to assemble the Tupperware's contents on their plates. A delicate green salad went down first. "Yes. I wanted this to be...special."

"You did?"

With a puff of delicious aroma, Julianne pulled two gorgeous Salmon en Croutes from a container, their Phyllo dough outer casings golden in color, and put them on the plates. Oliver realized she was purposefully not looking at him.

She said, "Sure. I feel like I owed you." She began to drizzle a dreamy white sauce flecked with dill over the salmon.

Reaching across the table, Oliver took the sauce and sat it on the table. Then he took her hand. "Julianne," he admonished. "You don't owe me --"

"No, not owed--" He felt her discomfiture, felt her try to jerk away a second before she squeezed his hand, entwined her fingers with this. Her wedding band slid between his fingers. Her eyes glowed at him throught the candlelight. "I'm ashamed how I behaved our last date, and you've been so understanding. I just want you to know how much I've appreciated your company. And your conversation, your flirtation. You deserve to be fawned over a little. I haven't cooked like this since ... in a very long time."

"Not even for your family?"

She gently let go of his hand, handed him his plate.

"I still cook. Monday night, running-between-activites cook. But not like this."

Oliver could have gently, gentlemanly, oh-so-civily gathered up the tablecloth, set the meal and its accoutrement on the ground, laid her back against the table and fucked her until she screamed.

It had been a very long time since he'd been fawned over. Now he knew what it had cost her to do so; what barrier from her husband's death she'd crossed over to accomplish it.

"I am honored," he said, letting every intention for her show in his eyes.

Rather than flustering her, his unvarnished admiration and lust for her seemed to make her glow. She smiled a Cleopatra smile in the candlelight. The evening had grown dark around their outdoor dinner party.

"Then eat before it gets cold."

Oliver picked up his sterling knife and fork -- he wondered if they'd been wedding gifts -- and cut into the flaky crust, releasing the the rich aroma of dill and butter. The salmon, when he took a bite, could have made him cry -- moist and delicate, paired with thin slices of leek and carrot. The light cream sauce was a perfect compliment.

It would have been sacrilege to speak while he was savoring it.

He was scooping up his last bite, using a final morsel of fish to gather up the cream and few remaining greens on his plate, when he asked without looking up, "Did you and your husband ever talk about opening a restaurant?"

There was silence. And then, when he finally did look at her, after swallowing his bite and eyeing her half-eaten fish, there was hurt-filled accusation.

He put down his knife and fork. "One thing," he said quietly, leaning forward. "Just tell me one thing about him. After two more dates, you'll never see me again and you can pretend this conversation never happened. But until then..." He picked up the champagne bottle and begin to slowly, microscopically refill her glass. He tilted his head, widened his eyes, batted his lashes. "I just want to get to know you better."

The implication was that he'd get her drunk to do it. He hoped he wasn't pushing his luck.

He saw the struggle in her. The effort to keep her husband an idol instead of a flesh-and-blood man who would have only wanted her to be happy. But hers was a smile that couldn't be held back. She huffed a laugh, looked away to roll her eyes and shake her head.

Oliver Queen hadn't practiced being a useless playboy for two decades to forget about the role's usefulness when he needed it. He put the bottle down and Gillian picked up her fork.

"We were going to open a bar after the boys graduated," she said, playing with her fish. "Jamie was going to pour beer, and I was going to create the world's best pub food using a hot plate and a microwave."

"You didn't want anything bigger than that?" Oliver asked, leaning back in his chair. "I imagine you catered more than sack lunches." He knew she'd received acclaim for the catered wedding of a Redskins linebacker to a Virginia congresswoman.

Julianne shook her head, her grin wistful as she petted her champagne glass. "No, we didn't want the stress. We just wanted a small neighborhood bar, someplace our friends could come and feel at home. We wanted the freedom to close for two weeks and go on vacation. Or hang up a 'Gone fishing' sign and go fishing."

"Do you fish?"

Julianne grinned as she drank from her glass. "I read. But I liked being out on the motor boat in the middle of the lake. I'd jump in every so often to cool off and my guys would complain that I was scaring away the fish."

Oliver had gone fishing on the Island. Sometimes starving, sometimes numb with despair, he caught fish with a knife, with netting when he was lucky, sometimes with his bare hands. His father forced him to go fishing with him on the Queen's Gambit, but Oliver the kid had complained endlessly about the hardship of being on a 73-meter yacht. When he was older, Oliver would shoot the harpoon and then return his attention to the breasts of whomever he'd brought onboard with him.

Oliver had never enjoyed Julianne's simple life, that satisfying peace. But he deeply understood why she mourned the loss of it.

"What about you?" she asked, dangling the glass from her fingers. "Have you had anyone you wanted to hang a 'Gone Fishin'' sign with?"

And just like that, as he looked into dark eyes that weren't going to let him off the hook, Oliver understood her resentment of nosy questions. Women of his life flashed through his brain -- Laurel, Shado, Helena, Sara -- and he'd wanted to runaway with all of them. But not in some peaceful, lull-away-the-day kind of way. He'd used each of them to escape -- his life, his responsibilities, himself. Had he ever felt like standing still, like steeping in his own skin, with any of them? Even Felicity, when he let those beautiful eyes she hid behind her glasses get to him, in moments of weakness or emotional exhaustion, was he imagining a true life with her? Or was he imagining decades of her staring at him with that hero worship?

Could he stand still with Julianne?

A flash of dazzling light drew his attention away from that startling thought. A large group to their right had stood and were raising lit sparklers into the air. Their light joined other pockets of fizzing sparkles in the dark, growing in abundance as more and more revelers stood and set their sparklers alight.

Thank God. "Where's the sparklers?" Oliver asked, knowing they signaled the beginning of the dancing. And the end of conversation. He began to rise from the table.

"But you haven't answered my question!" Julianne protested.

"It's time to dance." Oliver shrugged innocently as he flipped up the tablecloth to look beneath it. He grabbed the metallic ends of the sparklers poking out of the picnic basket and then looked at Julianne. "Do you have fire?"

She stubbornly stayed in her seat. "And we haven't had dessert."

Oliver set his free hand on the table. He looked down at Julianne for a quiet moment, into her dark eyes, as he leaned subtlely into her, invaded her space, breathed in her soft floral perfume. "I'm not having dessert until I get you back to my hotel room," he said softly.

The stubborn tilt of her jaw softened as Julianne drew in a quick breath. He lifted his hand to rub it down her arm, to take her hand and gently tug her from her seat. He pulled her to him as effortlessly as a bee to honey. "Fire?" he breathed against her lips. She said nothing. But her lips quivered.

He could be a real bastard sometimes.

Without letting her go, he tipped the ends of both sparklers into the candlelight. They glowed orange before they popped to life, sending out tiny lightening bolts. He handed one to Julianne, nodded his head to remind her to raise it, and then, with light hissing over their heads, he dropped his mouth to hers.

Her secrets hurt her. His shamed him. He would keep his close for a while longer. But he would make it up to her. Whatever he couldn't tell her in words, he could show her with his body.

\----------

Holding a picnic basket in one hand and Julianne's hand in the other, Oliver leaned his hip against the sensor lock of his suite at the Hay Adams, let the card key in his pocket click it open. He nudged the door wide and ushered her inside.

Housekeeping had done as he'd asked. A warm fire crackled in the marble fireplace at the end of the luxurious living area and the balcony doors were open to show the astonishing view of the lit up White House in the dark night. They'd set a dessert service and a bucket of champagne on the mahogony coffee table near the fire. An urn of white roses and hydrangeas scented the low-lit room.

Julianne was quiet as they entered, placing the white high heels she carried by the door. Oliver let her be and walked across the large, all-white room to the coffee table, sat the picnic basket down on the white velvet couch and reached for the champagne. He watched her as he began to remove the foil: watched her wander around the room in that lace skirt that swayed around her body as she walked, watched her stroke her fingers over the gleaming dining table that could seat twelve, lean into the urn of white flowers to catch their scent, step outside for a moment to marvel at the view. She stopped outside the French doors of his bedroom, peeked at the kind bed with its turned down duvet and the white rose on each pillow. She said nothing as she continued her wandering.

Oliver popped the top of the champagne and poured it into a crystal flute.

The last two hours still echoed in his ears: The big band music and their laughing and the numerous "Sorrys" as they tried to dance in the crush of white-dressed revelers. The night had dissipated into a clank and clatter of people breaking down their tables and carting their stuff away, a task Oliver had recruited his driver for while he'd grabbed the picnic basket and Julianne's hand and hauled her away, her protesting the whole time about staying to help.

Their laughing chatter when they began their walk at the Mall had mellowed to a companionable quiet by the time they'd reached the Hay Adams, a opulent, old-D.C. hotel across the street from the White House.

Her quiet now, though, was starting to seem like nerves. Oliver turned to the picnic basket and took a discreet, deep draw on the champagne glass before he refilled it and placed it on the table.

Flipping open the basket, he grinned when he saw what was in a Tupperware container. He pulled out a thick slab of chocolate cake -- so rich with dark chocolate it was almost black -- and placed it on the Hay Adams pink-and-gilt china.

"Funny," he said as he caught her eye, stopping her. Hoping to lure her closer. Slowly she moved to his side of room, leaned her hip against the other end of the couch as she eyed the plate in his hand.

The dark dessert was as startling a contrast in this mostly white room as it would have been at the Diner en Blanc event. Julianne shrugged a shrug that made her look like a 12-year-old tomboy. "All-white dinners are stupid," she said.

Julianne could have held her own with his crowd, Oliver thought. But she didn't give much credit to pretension. She'd taken down her hair on the walk over and kicked off her shoes with a relieved sigh in the elevator. With her wavy dark hair around her lacy white shoulders, she looked rumpled and innocent. And nervous.

Plate still in hand, Oliver sat on the couch and noticed a smear of dark frosting on his other thumb. He licked it off, aware that she watched him do it. "Come here," he said.

The frothy underlayers of her skirt moved against her bare, silky legs as she padded around the couch. For just a moment, when she crossed in front of the fire, he caught her slim silhouette through her dress, her round ass that had been hidden from him the rest of the night.

She took a prim seat a foot away from him on the couch. And looked down at the coffee table.

A linen napkin was spread out over the mahogany and set with one crystal flute filled with champagne, one sterling silver fork, one napkin folded into a rose. And the only plate was in Oliver's hand.

"But I packed two pieces of..." Julianne's voice trailed off as she looked at him, as her soft lips parted in the slightest "oh," as awareness rose to the apples of her cheeks, just above those dimples he loved to tease out.

He held the plate out to her, "Eat up," he said with his languid, devil grin.

She reached for the fork slowly, her hair drifting in front of her face. She pushed it behind her ear as she raised the fork, looked at him. She motioned to the plate. "So you want me to just..."

"Dig in," Oliver said, bringing the plate closer to her. "I just don't want you to get crumbs on your dress."

Julianne's fork hovered above the cake. "Yeah, right," she said, glancing up at him from under her dark lashes. The tines bit into the barest edge of the cake, clinked against the fine china as she scraped the bite away. She brought the bite to her mouth quickly, chewed, swallowed. Oliver never took his eyes away from her mouth. When he reached up with his free hand, she startled back.

"You've got frosting," Oliver said, with all the inflection of a butler. No she didn't. But his swipe across her bottom lip, a touch against the silk, was slow. He brought the digit to his mouth to clean away the phantom frosting, to taste her, while keeping his eyes on hers.

"There is a napkin," she pointed out. But her breathiness undermined the defiance in her voice.

"You won't need it," Oliver said. He moved closer, just an inch or two, and held out the plate.

This time, when Julianne, raised her fork, the utensil quivered.

The heat bloomed on her cheekbones as she continued to eat, as Oliver's eyes never left her, as he continued to clean her with his touch, taste her with his fingers. They were small, almost impersonal movements. They said nothing about the fire growing in Oliver, about the discomfort he'd crossed his legs to hide. He was becoming more and more obsessed with her lush lips, with the way they opened, gave him a glimpse of her pink tongue, surrounded the fork and then pressed around it. He'd run his hands through her dark hair, pushed it behind her ear, to keep it out of the cake, he told her. To keep his view of her lips clear, he knew for himself.

If he didn't know he had the upper hand, he would have sworn she was playing him, savoring the bite longer, sucking the fork clean harder. When her tongue had accidentally swiped at the pad of his thumb as he was wiping her lip, he felt a throb in his lap. When he licked at his own thumb, it tasted like chocolate and lemons.

"Do you want a bite?" she asked him. Had she said it in a kitten whisper? He mentally shook himself out of the fog of heat he was in. Why he did ask them to light the fire? He took a good look at her.

She held the fork up to him with a dark, luscious bite. Her eyes were wide and innocent -- too wide. Her teeth nibbled onto her lush bottom lip. The frosting gleamed like her lips after she licked them. The chocolate would be sweet and mysterious, like the shadows of her. Like those sweet, mysterious places he could search for and discover, spread and lick...

"No," he said, pushing the plate into her hands. "Hold this."

Reaching forward with both hands, he pushed the heavy coffee table away from the couch. And then got onto his knees in front of her.

"Oliver?" Julianne asked tremulously as he reached under the edge of her frothy skirts to place his hands on her warm silky knees.

"Don't worry about me," he said, trying the hide the strain in his voice with his butler's tone. "Just keep eating."

"Wha-?!"

"Take a bite." Criminals of Starling City would have recognized that voice.

Without taking her unsure eyes off of him, Julianne raised the bite of chocolate cake to her lips. Her skirts fluttered over the backs of his scarred hands as Oliver stroked up her thighs. Her skin was warm, but Oliver's hands were hotter. They probably felt like brands beneath her cool white skirt.

Her lips trembled as Oliver hooked his fingers around the sides of her panties.

"Raise up," he said. And she did, arching her back, raising up those breasts hidden behind demure lace, lifting her hips with plate and fork still in her hands. He slid her panties down her legs and worked the scrap of satin and lace over each delicate foot. And then he shoved them into his pocket.

No, she would not be seeing those panties again.

Studying every flicker of reaction in her wide, expressive eyes, Oliver reached around to bracket her legs and pushed into the calf muscle as he slowly stroked up. Caught her behind the knees. And pulled her legs apart.

The plate tilted dangerously as her lips fell open in a gasp.

Oliver moved into the space between her legs. Julianne's back was against the couch, keeping a necessary distance between her now-naked sweetness and his hardness pulsing against the couch. He rested his hands on her legs just under her skirt, his thumbs stroking just above her knees.

"Is this okay?" he murmurred. She looked down at her lap, at his hidden hands, at his body between her knees. She gave him a tremulous smile. "Yes."

He smiled softly, unexplicably charmed by her in the midst of wanting to screw her senseless. "Then take another bite."

She huffed a breathy laugh. "Is this like having my cake and eating it, too?"

"Something like that." Chocolate and sex in a $1,000-a-night hotel suite; this woman deserved to be drowned in decadence. With a hand obviously shaking, Julianne sank her fork into the cake and raised it to her lips.

Watching her savor the bite, Oliver let all of his desire show as his hands wandered up her legs, his forefingers massaging into the firm muscle, his thumbnails scraping at her sensitive inner thighs. His index finger tickled the crease at the top of her legs.

When Julianne swallowed, Oliver traced the seam of her, stroked in to find heat and so much wet.

Julianne's breath gasped out, her thighs spread wider as her hips involuntarily pushed toward him.

Oliver heard the devil chuckling out of him. "So eager," he said, as his finger gloried in all the moisture, all the welcome. Explored low to touch the delicate entrance of her, circle it, then traced higher to pet her hard, throbbing litle peak. Watched every flicker of pleasure on her face.

"You would be..." Julianne panted. "Ooooh ... eager too."

Three years, Oliver realized. Three years since someone had stroked this delicate flesh besides Julianne. As he fondled her with reverence, he fought the urge to rip open his pants and climb on top of her, claim her like a Neanderthal. Mine.

Her arms had fallen to the couch and she was about to let go of the plate and fork.

"Don't you dare put those down, Julianne," Oliver said, lightening his touch to increase the threat.

"Please," she begged, her hips wiggling out to press harder against his hand. "Please, let me touch you."

"I won't make you come if you let go," he growled. "You'll have to get yourself off. I'll make you raise your skirt and finger yourself while I watch.

Her helpless groan and copious moisture greeted his words. He had to knock himself against the couch to get himself under control. But her delicate hands stayed firm around the elegant Hay Adams tableware.

He rewarded her by filling her with his longest finger, moving it inside her while he circled her throbbing peak with his thumb. Capturing her lost dark eyes with his, he began to tell her his fantasy.

"Next time I'll let you touch me," he said, biting back a groan as she began to move her hips against his thrusting hand. "Next time, I'll make you kneel in front of me. I'll make you to unbutton my pants and pull me out." Oliver knocked himself against the couch again as he felt her muscles clench his finger. He pushed in a second one, moved his hand faster. "I'll make you ..." Those lush lips were falling open and her nipples were hard round tips against her dress and her muscles were dancing little flurries around his fingers. "Oh God, I'll beg you, I'll beg, please, please, take me into your mouth, swallow me like that piece of cake, lick me clean."

Julianne threw the tableware away and flung her arms around him as she cried out, pulled herself against him as her muscles pulsed and clenched around his fingers, as her hips pushed against his churning hand. Her hot, hot lips were pressed against his hot, hot neck and Oliver locked an arm around her to keep her steady, so he could pump every ounce of pleasure out of her hot, hot body.

"Please," Julianne moaned into his ear as her hips began to slow. "Please."

And then her hand snuck between them to wrap around his hardness.

Oliver made his body like cold rock, like unfeeling stone. He let his mind free, to consider and decipher without the impediment of his sensations and emotions. He'd assassinated people in this state. He'd endured weeks of torture. He'd withstood his mother's murder floating above himself.

He'd never wanted to enter this state with Julianne.

"Julianne, let go."

"Please, just let me stroke you."

"It won't be enough," he said, pulling his fingers from her body. The wet velvet stroke against his fingers almost turned him into flesh again. He planted his fists against the couch seat, away from her hips. "I'll push into your mouth. And then into your body."

The hand against him didn't move. And then, blessedly, it set him free.

Oliver swooped back into himself. She was still wrapped around him, and when Oliver felt her trembling, a combination of her passionate release and his rejection, his arms surrounded her and pulled her close against him. If he couldn't be inside her, he could at least enjoy this, the feel of her thighs against his hips, her arms around his back, her sweet breath against his neck and her pleasure-wracked body depending on him to hold her up.

He turned his head to her ear. "I don't want to risk ruining this," he whispered.

The scrape of her nod against his chin was understanding, a benediction. Then she raised her head, strands of her hair catching in his scruff, surrounding him in her smell, sweet and deeply erotic at the same time.

"But next time," she breathed into his ear. And then bit it. "Next time you're meeting me on my turf. I'm going to make you the best damn meal you've ever had. And then I'm locking the door and not letting you go until I've kissed every inch of you."

It was Oliver's turn to groan. He clutched her to him for long minutes in the quiet and the struggle and the swamp of want. And in the small light of hope.

Finally, he loosened his hold. "Your turf?" he murmured. "Your house?"

She ran her hands up to his shoulders, leaned back from him. "Sure," she said. And smiled. Julianne post-orgasm was a beautiful, rosy, glowing sight. "I have weekends without the boys at home. We'll make one coincide with our fourth date."

Sure. Just like that, she was inviting him to her home. She was giving him a piece of herself. Perhaps she was only offering because they had an expiration date. Or perhaps ...

Julianne began to giggle. Looking down the front of him, she said, "It wasn't me that needed to worry about crumbs."

Oliver looked down the front of himself to see, around the still-prominent fly of his white pants, a dark chocolate hand print. He looked up at Julianne. She bit her lip at him. And they both burst into laughter.


	4. Fourth Date

Rain pattered on Julianne's roof and -- if the dark grey sky showing through the large window above her kitchen sink was any indication -- the sound wasn't going away anytime soon.

Not that Julianne could hear it above the blast of Ed Sheeran singing through the pink boombox on her kitchen counter. In sweatpants pulled up to her calves and an oversized white t-shirt, Julianne boogied on barefeet to Ed Sheeran singing "Don't" while she cut up carrots for the first course she was making for Oliver.

"And I wasn't looking for a promise or commitment, but it was never just fun and I thought you were different," she rapped along, using the handle of her razor-sharp butcher knife as a microphone until she realized she was rapping alone. She knocked the butt of her knife against her ancient boom box -- a high school graduation present from her parents -- and continued to dance as the CD dutifully played along.

Her sons gave her endless crap about her technological deficiencies: She still bought CD's, wrote her appointments down on a paper calendar, and had to press the 6 on her phone four times to text Oliver. And while they would take her hot pink boombox from her cold, dead hands -- thank you very much -- she had been considering that maybe she should be thinking about upgrading to a smartphone. If she was at all serious about her recent daydreams of re-starting her catering business, then she would need to join the 21st century for the sake of her clients.

She swept aside the carrots, grabbed an onion, and waited, just a moment, for the old feelings of guilt to spring to life at the thought of resurrecting her catering business. When they didn't come, she started dicing. And continued dancing.

Her life felt like a little purple jonquil poking its head above leftover winter snow.

Two weeks ago, Oliver had made her say Jamie's name out loud, had made her tell a story about her day-to-day life with her husband, and somehow, through that alchemy, Julianne had felt the sun on her face for the first time in three years. The glare wasn't on that one horrible moment and all that it had cost her; instead, the light was shining on the glorious 15 years that had preceded it. Julianne could now remember their dreams, all the dreams that she could still carry out. She could still be the funny, persnickety, mildly adventurous woman Jamie had loved. She didn't have to be such a sad mom to her kids, two incredible boys who showed her her husband's green eyes and dark blond hair everyday.

She could be the woman that Oliver Queen gave orgasms to while she ate chocolate cake. The memory of that brought such a rush of heat that Julianne had to stop cutting or risk hacking off a finger. She'd avoided analyzing the happiness she'd felt over the last two weeks too much; it was too wonderful to ruin. But the thick, grey fog over her future had begun to dissipate, revealing light and shape and form. She could re-start her catering career to share the food that Oliver raved about. She could come out of her shroud for her children, take them on the trips that she had and Jaime had planned.

She could take a lover. She and her husband had had a rich and fun sex life. If had she been the one to go, she would have mourned that Jamie's effervescent sex drive had been stunted.

Oliver was coming to dinner tonight, and Julianne was only slightly embarrassed that she'd rushed their next date. Her parents had this long weekend with her kids on the calendar, and it was just too convenient to not offer to Oliver. She was too eager. Every time her mind started to wonder, "What if...", she slammed the brakes on it. She was not going to wonder "What if..." with billionaire playboy Oliver Queen. That was a bad movie. But she was looking forward to him being in her home, seeing the pictures on the walls, eating from her favorite plates, and experiencing this nest that she thought was cozy and comfortable and welcoming.

She was excited about sharing this with him. She wasn't going to analyze too much why.

She ticked off the list of to-dos in her head as her foot tapped to the beat on the granite tile. The house was clean, the coq au vin was cooking along beautifully in the Crock-pot, and the chocolate-and-raspberry cobblers would only take a second to assemble. It was still hours until Oliver arrived in town; she hoped this stupid rain wouldn't delay his plane. Oh yeah, she needed to remember to get out the candles in case the power went out...or...in case they just needed candlelight for other things. She grinned to herself as she swept aside the onion and grabbed a garlic bulb. As soon as she was done making this caramelized onion and carrot soup, she was going to get out of her old sweats and worn t-shirt and spend hours pampering. She'd showered earlier, but she wanted to transform herself into Oliver's fantasy.

He'd certainly become hers.

Swaying her hips to the music, she barely heard her home phone ringing over Ed Sheeran's lovely voice. She be-bopped to where the phone sat on the butcher block island and rested the receiver on her shoulder while she danced back to the cutting board.

"Yell-o," she said.

"Mrs. Schneider, this is Vance Latham with the Washington Post. We were wondering if you had any comment about the piece posted on Celebrity Gotcha?"

Julianne could barely hear him over the music.

"Excuse me?"

"Your photo? On the website, Celebrity Gotcha. With you and Oliver Queen?"

Julianne almost dropped the phone. She laid down the knife and snapped off the music.

"What are you talking about?" she said in the silence. It seemed to press in around her.

"I guess you haven't seen it. It's on CelebrityGotcha.com." The man spelled out the URL, and Julianne hurried to her kitchen desk and tapped it into the laptop she kept there. In an instant, the garish website -- full of exclamation points and blinking text and thumbnails of scantily clad celebrities -- popped up. And there, the top photo on the page, was a photo of her and Oliver at the Diner en Blanc. They were laughing as Oliver's hands held her close around the waist and Julianne's hands were on his shoulders. And while Oliver looked as stunning as always, his eyes bright and jaw sharp as he laughed, something about the light and the angle had caught Julianne weird. The light seemed to burrow into the faint lines around her eyes, into lines she hadn't noticed round her mouth, making her look worn and tired. Her hands at his shoulders were curled into claws; they looked like they were digging into him. And the editors had Photoshopped a particularly bright gleam on her wedding band.

The stunned quality of her silence must have been apparent over the phone. "I'll give you a moment to read it," the reporter said.

She wouldn't need more than a moment. The rag wrote for the lowest common denominator and they had to keep their words simple. And pointed.

A Cougar Catches A Queen

Has little-lost billionaire Oliver Queen found himself a mommy? Queen, 29, was spotted at Washington, D.C.'s swanky Diner en Blanc recently with Julianne Schneider, a 40-something Virginia housewife. Maybe the MILF with a wedding ring was just trying to burp him? We all can imagine how FUBAR'd Mr. Queen is after spending five years stranded on a deserted island, coming home to realize Mother Queen was planning to blow up his hometown, and then standing by while Mommy Dearest was murdered in front of him. But did he really need to troll suburban Targets for a date? You can do better, Mr. Queen. Give us a call -- at least we were born during the Reagan era!! We'll spank you and tell you what a bad boy you are!

Julianne forced herself to laugh through a closed throat. "Sir, it must be a slow news day. I have no comment."

She hung up the phone. In a daze, she returned to the article, where all the little tidbits of Oliver's life, the tidbits he never discussed and she'd refused to research, were highlighted in electric blue. Her mouse hovered over "five years stranded on a deserted island." She clicked. And began her way down the rabbit hole of Oliver's life.

An hour later, she called her mother. She warned her what might be coming and asked her to monitor the boys' phone interactions to make sure they weren't getting info from their friends. She would explain everything, she promised, when her parents brought the boys home on Monday afternoon. If they needed anything, they could call on her cell; she was taking the home phone off the hook.

Then she picked up her cell phone. "Don't come." she typed. Her boys were right; she did need a smart phone. It took her forever to type in the Celebrity Gotcha link using the keypad of her phone. She pressed send.

She did know how to use one feature on her phone. In her contacts, she scrolled until she found Oliver's info and then highlighted "Block Number." Enter.

Leaving the cut-up vegetables on the kitchen counter, Julianne turned off the kitchen lights and wandered into the darkened living room. She sat on the couch. She was suddenly very tired. Laying down, she dragged the sofa throw off the back of the couch and pulled it up to her chin.

She blinked wearily at the rain hitting the windows. It was really coming down. She didn't know it was going to storm. Or...yes, she did. It was supposed to storm all weekend. She fell asleep as thunder rolled ominously outside.

\----------

A heavy bang on the front door startled Julianne awake. Heart racing, she pushed up from the couch, felt the blanket slither off her onto the floor. Heard the hard clatter of rain on her roof.

The room was pitch black. Why was she asleep on the couch? She tried to read the digital clock on the mantel, but couldn't find it. A flash of lightening exposed the whole room. The clock was blank; the power had gone out. A blast of thunder let her know why.

The heavy fist on the front door banged again. "Julianne!"

Oh my God. She scrambled to a sitting position, pushed back her tangle of hair. It was Oliver. Everything that had happened, everything she'd learned about him, came rushing back. He'd been on a deserted island for FIVE YEARS. He'd been accused of being a masked vigilante. His mother had been murdered in front of him. His company had been hijacked by a mad woman.

And people thought he was pathetic for dating her.

"Julianne, I know you're in there!" he yelled through the heavy wood door. No, he didn't, she thought as she clutched her hands to her thumping heart. Unless he'd purchased x-ray goggles at that same store where he'd bought his baby alligator boots. If she just stayed quiet, stayed perched on the couch, he'd get the message. Go away. Never come back. Never, ever, ever tempt her into believing that something fantastic was still possible for her. A crack of lightening sent the rain slamming harder onto her roof.

Sent Oliver's fist even harder into her door. "Goddammit, Julianne."

Goddammit?!? Goddamn him. Heat began to warm her arms, exposed in her oversized white t-shirt. How dare he curse her on her own doorstep when he was the liar! When he'd kept her in the dark and now exposed her -- and possibly her family -- to his sick world.

Suddenly she heard the scrape of bushes against her front window. She doubted he could see her, not through the filmy curtains and the darkness of the room, but that didn't stop Julianne from holding her breath.

"Julianne!" his deep voice yelled through the glass. "I like those decorative stones in your yard. I'm holding one right now. If you don't open the door, I'm throwing it through your window."

Julianne gasped and scrambled to her feet. That bastard! She ran on bare feet across the hardwood floor, fumbled with the locks, threw open the door.

A large dark shadow stepped onto the porch.

"You're insane!" she yelled over the rain. "Being alone on that island screwed something loose."

A lightening flash revealed the rain coming down in sheets on her culdesac. Its noise had hopefully prevented her neighbors from hearing him. The lightening also showed that Oliver was soaked. His thick, short hair stuck up in spikes. His brown leather jacket was plastered against him. And he was furious. The roar of thunder could have come from him.

He pushed past her, splattering her as he stepped inside. Sputtering with outrage, she followed him, but left the door open. He wasn't going to be in her house long.

"I should call the cops," she said, planting her hands on her hips. The neighbor's generator must have kicked on. Their porch light made him visible, barely, dripping in her entryway.

He took a step closer to hover over her as water slithered down his jaw. "Call them. I'll still have time to tell you that sending that text was a dick move."

Julianne hissed a breath like he'd burned her. "You're a liar."

"And you're a coward." With that, he stepped around her and slammed the door closed. The house reverberated like it had been struck by lightening.

He stood blocking her door, broad shoulders heaving with his breath, lined by the neighbor's faint light filtering through her curtains. "Get me a towel."

"Not a chance."

"Fine." He unzipped the close-fitting jacket, struggled out of it, and dropped it with a wet plop on the floor. Then he reached for the bottom of the soaked t-shirt that lined his torso like a second skin.

"What are you --"

Oliver pulled the t-shirt over his head and flung it away. Oliver Queen stood half-naked in her entryway, his torso touched by grainy light. He had a tattoo, a star, on his left pec. Every single muscle -- his abs, his chest, his biceps and forearms -- stood out in stark relief against his skin. His nipples were hard from the cold. He had, oh God, he had so many scars.

She whirled around, gave him her back. "Get out of my house."

"No."

She began to move, cold feet moving quickly across a hardwood floor he'd made slippery, anywhere to get away from him. "You misled me and you made a fool of me and you dragged me into your slimy gossip circles. Get out of my house!"

He grabbed her before she could reach her hallway, swung her around to face him. "No," he said through gritted teeth, grabbing her by her biceps to drag her close. "You tell me that you admire me, that you appreciate me. You make me feel like ... I have something to offer besides my money and my name." He was hard lines and black eyes in the dimness. And radiating heat. "And then, when something happens that I have no control over, you send me that shitty text. You won't even give me a chance to explain."

She wrenched her arms out of his grasp. His hands on her exposed skin should have felt cold, clammy. They didn't.

"It's too late for explanations," she said, wrapping her arms around herself as she stepped away from his naked torso. "How can you explain away the fact that you didn't tell me you were stranded on an island for five years?"

He took a frustrated swipe through his wet hair. "'We will never discuss our pasts,' you said. Forgive me if I believed you. Or felt relief. Do you know how fucked up people think I am? Why do you get to be the only one who hides?"

"I'm not hiding."

He laughed an ugly laugh. "That's all you did until you met me. It's what you'll return to if I let you -- sitting alone in the dark, sending your shitty judgmental texts, cutting any man off at his knees. You'll pat yourself on the back for getting rid of me and convince yourself there was no chance of something special between us."

Her hands clenched in front of her. "There isn't." She took several steps back from him into the hall. She could make the back door before he caught her. "I could never trust a man who didn't tell me such crucial information."

He followed her deeper into the hall, deeper into the dark. "Tonight. I was going to tell you tonight. You invited me into your home. I know what a big deal that is for you. I was going to tell you." He was barely a shadow. His deep voice asked her to believe him. His voice yearned.

A crack of fear, as real as any lightening strike, bolted through her. "No, no," she said, feeling her disheveled hair whipping her cheeks as she shook her head, as she began to move back from him. She could make the back door. "I don't believe you. Get out!"

Just as she pivoted, just as she was going to make a run for it, the shadows blurred in front of her and his hands, his hot skin and hard chest forced her against her hallway wall, rattling the pictures that hung there. "Goddammit, what are you so afraid of?" She could see the white of his gritted teeth, feel the hot agitation of his breath against her cheek, feel the impossible strength of his body pressing against her from breasts to thighs. She turned her head away and squeezed her eyes closed, resisting him the only way she could.

It didn't stop him. "Don't you know that I need you?" he whispered into her ear, along her neck. "How many ways are you going to make me say it? I need you." His hard hand let go of her arm to grip her hip through her sweatpants. "You think I've been doing all the giving and you're getting, but...God..." His head dipped to her shoulder, pressing his wet forehead against her. "The peace I feel with you."

Her heart felt like it was beating through her thin t-shirt.

"Give me more time. At least, give me my five dates." His lips breezed over the skin of her collar bone, barely a touch. "Don't leave hating me. Don't leave thinking all of the horrible things other people think. Don't leave me without knowing." It was a kiss now, soft and gentle where her shoulder met her neck.

She squeezed her eyes tight, tears leaking out of them, as Oliver gave slow kisses to the base of her neck. Still pressing her against the wall, he trailed soft, warm kisses down her chest into the V of her t-shirt, between her breasts.

Into the heart of her, he breathed, "Don't make me leave without knowing."

His big hands caught at the neck of her t-shirt and, without moving his lips, he ripped it like it was tissue paper. Ripped her t-shirt and pushed it down her shoulders until her naked breasts were exposed, until he could slowly twist his head and rub his scruff over the sensitive curves, while her arms were bound just above her elbows.

Julianne's head fell back against the wall as she let out a sob in the dark hallway.

The lick over her nipple was refined, a neat and tidy taste, before he bit. Before he sucked. Julianne felt her body straining against the hands that held her against the wall, wanting to rise up and push against his body. He dragged his scruff and wet kisses to her other breast, made love to her nipple with hot flicks and long warm sucks, as he held her down.

When he finally released her, it was so he could hold her breasts in his big hands. He rubbed her skin, squeezed, held their weight like her body was precious.

Julianne trembled against the wall like she was being struck by the rain. "Kiss me," she moaned. "Please, Oliver. Please kiss me."

He ripped her t-shirt completely off. He shoved her sweats and panties down her hips and stripped them off her legs. And then he picked her up and took her mouth and Julianne wrapped her naked body around hard hips and wet jeans and hot, slick, unbearably strong man. He demanded so much from her mouth, biting, taking, searching for his 'yes.' Julianne held his head close to her and gave it to him.

"Upstairs," she gasped. "My bedroom."

Still kissing her relentlessly, Oliver took ground-eating steps down the hallway and up the stairs.

\----------

When Oliver kicked her bedroom door closed behind him, he plunged them into deep, dark black, leaving Julianne blind and engulfed in the warmth of his skin, the spice of his scent and the roar of her heartbeat, almost drowning out the rain. He found her bed as if he could see it, untangled her from him, then stroked his hands over her limbs to spread her out in the middle of the mattress. When he took her heat, his body, away, she almost cried out. But she heard the hiss of a zipper, his struggle out of the wet denim. Stretched out, obedient, her body hummed in response.

The bed dipped as he put a knee on the bed and then he was there, silk skin over steel muscles, the ripple of scars, warmth and weight, pressing against her naked skin, surrounding her with heavy arms, branding her quivering stomach and the hungry cradle of her body. Oliver Queen's almost-naked body was pressing her into the mattress; her hands slicked down muscle and scar to feel the damp waistband of his boxer briefs. She was about to rage like a child when he swept her arms over her head like he owned her, captured her wrists in one big hand, used the other to lift up her head and took her mouth in a kiss full of wet and suction.

She forgot her name as Oliver's tongue destroyed her mouth.

She raised her knees, gripped his heavy hips with her thighs and shifted until, ah there. Long, thick and hard, Oliver wrapped in cotton settled perfectly against her wet folds. She gave one roll of her body -- demanding and giving pleasure with a stroke of her seam, her stomach, her breasts -- and Oliver groaned into her mouth. She could come on the low vibration of his pleasure.

"Let go of my hands," she pleaded, wriggling her hands in a grip like handcuffs.

"Can't." He tilted her head back to suck on her neck, to use his tongue on her ear the way she hoped he soon was going to use his shaft on her body.

"But I want..." She was becoming one blind, shivering nerve. "I want to do stuff, too."

"Later." He was dragging her hands closer to her head as he moved down, dragging those incredible muscles over her sleek skin. He found her breast unerringly in the dark, making her jump as he scraped his teeth over the top of the mound and then fondled the tip with his tongue.

"Your nipples," he breathed against her chest. "They're so hard. And sweet." His mouth played over her.

"I wonder where else you're sweet?"

Moisture flooded her. She jolted her hips up against the hard heat of his naked abdomen, trying to find relief as she moaned. "Oliver...god..."

His sucking, licking, biting mouth was traveling its way relentlessly down her body as he dragged her arms, a wrist in each hand, to her sides and pressed them into the mattress. He was bathed in darkness so each kiss, each bite, came as a surprise, a tiny lightening bolt to her body that she wasn't sure where would strike next. A bite to a rib, a kiss on her hipbone, a swirling lick into her belly button. She was a pulsing mess as Oliver slid even lower, used his broad shoulders to muscle her legs further apart and then settled in, making himself at home.

Tilting her head back into the black, her body offered lubricious welcome as she felt hot breath on her delicate skin. She turned over her hands to grip his thick wrists with her fingers, to hold onto something. She gave a sob. She'd missed this so much.

Rough scruff nuzzled gently between her legs; soft lips and a silken tongue opened her and stroked her hard. Her thighs melted open onto the bed as a sound of surrender moaned long and low from her lips.

"Honey and lemons," Oliver growled into her before his tongue began to paint pleasure over her secret skin, up and down the wet folds, a kiss here, a suck there, offering a scrape of his chin then focusing, surrounding the pulsating little bud with his lips while his tongue flicked and flicked and flicked. Thighs still spread, her calves hooked over his biceps, Julianne arched her pelvis up to him in helpless little pulses, helping him have what he wanted. His tongue dipped to plunge inside of her. Julianne stiffened, her lower back arched, every sense tuned to that slick muscle fucking her in the dark. She realized sounds -- horrible, desperate, pleading sounds -- were coming out of her throat. They were being ripped from her. She would never make those sounds voluntarily.

The smells of musk and spice and rain and sweat were filling the blackness.

Oliver let go of her right hand. Desperate for the anchor, terrified of being flung out into space, Julianne clawed for it back. Oliver squeezed her left hand to soothe her, slid his hand over to rub her tummy, to hold her down and offer her comfort while he relentlessly devoured her between her legs.

Then his freed hand stroked up her thigh and slid two fingers into her body. His hand on her stomach had to hold her down for real now, had to keep her from wriggling away from the explosive pleasure as his fingers slid and twisted and pumped inside her, as his tongue stroked up her wetness to return to that bud, to flick and bite and suck and suck and ...

Opening her eyes to the blackness, arching her body toward her fantasy lover's face, Julianne screamed as lightening tore through her body. She grabbed his head, pressing him against her. He grabbed her hips, locking her in place as he continued to eat her. Another bolt shot through her, twisting her. Still, Oliver refused to slow down or let go. A third orgasm, like static electricity left behind, built in her lower back. She tried to shove his head away.

"You're gonna go again," he growled against her wetness.

"I can't," she moaned.

"You're gonna go again." And when his tongue pushed thickly inside her, she did, screaming and coming until grayness descended over her, collapsing her hips back to the mattress.

When she came back to herself, still panting, Oliver had moved up her body and held her loosely against him, his arm wrapped just under her breasts, the heat from his chest warming her back. His unsteady breath fluttered her hair. Her bottom felt cool and exposed, and when she tried to scoot back, to nestle against his warmth and seek some comfort from the overwhelming thing that just happened, he stayed her with a hand on her lower back. Kept her bottom from making contact with his pelvis.

"Oliver?"

"Let's go downstairs." His voice sounded strained. "We'll light some candles and...I'll tell you about me. But let's go..."

Julianne turned over, placed her hands lightly on his chest. His skin felt like it was burning. "We don't need to go all the way downstairs to light candles." When she pushed him to his back and straddled him, Oliver let out a pained groan. He was a steel rod in his boxer briefs, hot and throbbing against her sensitized flesh.

"Julianne, don't..." He wrapped his big hands around her waist as if he was going to lift her off. Julianne clamped down her thighs, leaned over him to fumble at the air for her bedside table, found the drawer and the pillar candles and matches inside.

The hiss of the match joined the song of the rain and a mellow orange-gold lit her cream-colored duvet and the gorgeous bronze-colored man spread over it. A gorgeous, generous, dented man who was once again trying to deny himself an orgasm. Who was once again trying to pause this thing happening between them so that they could draw out their time together, rather than ending it in an explosive flash.

His eyes were closed and his brows were drawn together as if she were killing him. She leaned over, savoring the drag of her nipples against his hard chest, and kissed that fierce line between his eyebrows. "You're so silly," she said against his skin. His blue eyes popped open, his hands mellowed at her waist. "I made you a promise last time. I'm not letting you go until I've kissed every inch of you." His moan was low in his chest as her tongue sleeked over his eyebrow and her kisses traveled over his temple and to his scruff.

"But, we need to talk," he whispered as she rubbed her cheek and chin against his scruff, letting it tickle.

She took a bite out of the incredible blade of his jaw. "And we will. But first..." She gathered his jaw in her hands and tilted his chin up to kiss him like she was the Queen and he was her captive slave. She pulled back to look into his blazing blue eyes. "I'm going to explore this incredible body and then suck you off."

Oliver raised his fists and covered his eyes. "Fuck, Julianne."

He was a buffet of stunning masculinity in her bed, stretched taut between her thighs. She could stare at him in the candlelight for hours; do nothing but stroke him in awe with her fingertips for hours more. For her, he was a fantasy come to life. For him, he was a man whose effort to cling to life on an isolated island was etched into his skin, was carved into his muscles.

She leaned forward to feather her lips on dual jagged lines moving away from the star tattooed on his chest.

"Can you feel my lips?" she said against the puffy skin.

"No..." She felt his hardness jump beneath her. "And yes."

"These lines make your tattoo look like a shooting star."

"Julianne...don't..." She swirled her tongue around his nipple, bit into the hard cap of his pec to silence him. She slid lower to kiss a deep gash in his rib cage.

"Did you sew your own stitches?"

"No, I..." He cleared the strain from his throat. "I wasn't always alone on the island. It was a staging ground for some black ops crews. Things were ... generally better when I was alone."

She refused to show shock at anything he told her. "I bet."

His hands settled on her, stroked her back and shoulders gently as she traced the incredible divot dividing his stomach with her tongue. That divot, it was something she only read about in adult fairy tales. Those muscles contracted as she stroked the fine line of hair below his belly button.

The head of him peaked above his boxer briefs, weeping a single drop. She licked it away.

"Julianne," he groaned as his hot hands squeezed her shoulders.

"Turn over."

His head shot up. "What?"

She looked up at him over the gold-kissed strength of his body, stared at his beautiful face and narrowed blue eyes. And gave him a slow, evil smile. "'Every inch of you,' I said. There's 50 percent of you I haven't even gotten a good look at yet."

"Christ," he said as turned like his body weighed a million pounds and settled -- gingerly -- on his front. "You could teach those black ops boys a thing or two about torture."

Hearing the word "torture" drop so casually out of his mouth when she saw what they'd done to his back -- the long cuts and wide swath of burn and the tragic dragon tattoo -- drained all of Julianne's humor away. She laid her body against him, stretched over his warm body like a shield that could protect him, wrapped her arms under his shoulders to hold him close and kissed that sad, closed-eyed dragon.

She felt him shudder beneath her.

Time slowed down as Julianne shed all pretense of play and just loved him, gave worshipful kisses and long, soothing strokes to his wide back and powerful arms, down his legs with their dark-blonde hair sparking gold in the candlelight. Oliver was ticklish behind his knee and biting his Achiles tendon made him pant. Julianne hoped that whoever was going to be the lifelong companion of this deserving man, whoever was going to give him children and the peace he sought, knew that.

She wrapped her hands around the waist band of his boxer briefs and carefully pulled them over his ass and down his legs. The sight of those twin caps of muscle, of the hard indents on the side, of this strength and vulnerability and naked exposure, sent moisture and a hard clench through Julianne's body.

She leaned over, let her messy curls tickle the skin as she gave his ass one wet loving kiss, and then whispered, "Turn over."

She felt the muscles all along his body stiffen as if he was steadying himself. And then he pushed over onto his back.

There was no reason this part of him should be any less perfect than the rest of him. It was stupid for her to be stunned. But stunned she was as she looked at him, long and thick and straight as an arrow. Luscious. Made even more beautiful by the single clear drop that welled to the top, as if he could feel the heat of her gaze. She looked up into his burning blue eyes as she reached for him.

"You're so beautiful," she breathed as she wrapped her hand around him, loved the feel of steel and silk sliding against her palm, loved the jump of his jaw muscles as she stroked him.

She leaned over and tasted musk and heat and the essence of Oliver against her tongue. God, she'd missed this, too.

Savoring just the tip of him in her mouth, she searched blindly until she found his hand, lifted it to place it against her nape. She wanted some clue from him, some indication of what he liked. Then she rose up on her knees, settled her palms against his hard stomach and sank her lips slowly, slowly over the entire length of him.

If the squeeze on her neck was any indication, he liked that.

She let him rest there in the depths of her mouth, let herself get used to him there, before she sucked up, hard and slow, until she could twirl her tongue her around his tip again. She took a gentle nip, wrapped her hand around his base, and then began to work him with focus and suction and a wicked tongue. Her free hand stroked and scratched the ridges of his belly while his hand burrowed into her hair, squeezing and caressing. When he planted a foot on the bed, when he began to pulse gently into her mouth, Julianne looked up to see him watching, his blue gaze devouring everything she did to him.

It made her feel powerful. He made her feel free. She began to work her hand in time with her mouth, squeezing him in her slick fist. She felt his thigh turn to concrete beneath her free hand.

And now he was pulling at her hair, trying to tug her head away. "Julianne," he groaned. "Oh god...pull off."

She did, this time. Sucked him one last time before she sat back back on her haunches and kept working him in her fist and ate him up with her eyes while he pushed himself into her hand and dropped his mouth wide and stared a shocked bright blue gaze at her ceiling while he came and came and came against the hard, arching plank of his body.

His body dropped back to her bed. She continued to stare as she watched his powerful muscles relax, as she watched those penetrating eyes close and that beautiful head with its big brain roll lazily on his shoulders. Oliver Queen, muzzy with an orgasm she'd given him, was the most erotic thing she'd ever seen.

His eyes struggled open to half mast to look at her. "Come here."

Her naked body curled against his naked side like she'd done it every night of her life. His arm curled around her back, pulled her closer.

"Stay the night," she whispered into his ear, inhaling the spice of him while she laid her arm over his chest to hug him to her.

"Yes."

"I'm not going to make love to you."

"Good."

"But I want to do everything else."

The chuckle he gave was rusty. "Christ."

"What?"

"I was just thinking it would be a week before I could get hard for you again."

"Really?" She was thrilled he felt so thoroughly pleasured.

"No." He dragged her hand down, down to where he was hardening and lengthening. And then he flipped her over, surrounded her in his arms and pressed against where he was not going to enter.

They smiled at each other like two crazy, eager kids. "Oh," Julianne said. "Good."

\----------

In the long night, cocooned by the rain and the dark, Oliver and Julianne played in little pools of candlelight. The sharp line they'd drawn across what they would not do created wild, wide-open spaces to explore what they would do. Oliver took his revenge for Julianne's slow, full-body exploration by doing some exploring of his own, by returning her torture kiss-for-kiss until she was clawing and sobbing into her pillow. In her large master bathroom, Oliver lit every candle he could find and then stood her in front of her mirror, let her see his desire and admiration for her as he stroked her body. When she tried to turn her head away, embarrassed, he turned her head back to their reflection.

"Look," he said. "Watch what you do to me."

When Oliver wrapped her hand around him, when he sought that wet, weeping place between her legs and made her watch as they pleasured each other, Julianne gave up her final, foolish concern that her 40-year-old body wasn't enough for him.

In the dimly lit shower, she made the best of her trembling legs by sinking to her knees and taking Oliver into her mouth. He propped his upper back against the tile, buried his hands in her wet hair, and gently and with complete and total raunch, fed her his body. The smile he gave her when she looked up at him was feral, and when she felt him thicken in her mouth, she grabbed onto his finely carved ass and swallowed every drop.

Oliver joined her on the tile floor.

Hunger eventually drove them down to the kitchen. With a sheet wrapped low around his hips, Oliver lit more candles while Julianne gathered his wet clothes from around her house and threw them into the dryer. His poor leather coat was ruined. She considered putting her ripped t-shirt into the cleaning cloth bin, but was afraid it would shock her with electricity every time she touched it. His coat and her shirt would live together for a long time in a dump somewhere.

Opening the slow cooker, Julianne was pleased to see that her coq au vin was still warm. Oliver came up behind her, ran his hand along her abdomen under the silken nightshirt -- the only piece of clothing he'd let her wear -- and along the edge of the satin underwear that she'd insisted upon.

He leaned over her shoulder and breathed in. "Smells delicious." And then he nuzzled into her neck. "Smells delicious."

Julianne grabbed his hand as it began to wander south. "One hunger at a time, Mr. Queen."

She ladled out deep bowls of the red-wine-drenched chicken, sausage and potatoes, cut up thick slices of crusty bread and poured glasses of Bordeaux. Oliver watched her set up their place settings on opposite sides of the island; without a word, he dragged his stool around to her side and leaned across the bar to pull his bowl near hers. When he sat down next to and grinned, putting his hand on her knee, Julianne had to bite her lips against being painfully and deliriously charmed by this half-naked and scarred playboy.

They ate ravenously for several blissful minutes with the rain against the windows the only sound. They savored their wine in the glow of the candlelight and shared bits of bread soaked in the rich broth.

Oliver took a huge bite out of the chunk of bread she held up to him. "Having lots of not-sex makes me hungrier than having sex," he said around a mouthful.

Julianne leaned forward to kiss away the broth that had dribbled into his scruff. "Or maybe you're just starving because it's past midnight and you didn't eat dinner."

"No way. It's not that late."

"I bet it is." She slid from her stool. "Let me check my watch..."

He grabbed her hand before she could step away. "Don't." His grip was surprisingly tight. She looked into blue eyes asking her to humor him.

"Let's not find out what time it is. Stay lost with me."

The need mixed with embarrassment on this powerful and beautiful man had Julianne curving against him and wrapping her arms around his hot naked torso as if she could protect him. "Okay," she murmured against the ragged, crescent-shaped star on his shoulder. She kissed it.

The kiss sobered them both a bit, reminded them they still had a lot to talk about.

Julianne sat back on her stool.

"It's funny," Oliver said looking down as he twisted his linen napkin in his hands. "I used to check the time and date obsessively when I got back from the Island. I'd gone so long without the anchor of time that just being able to look at a watch made me feel like I wasn't dreaming, that I'd actually made it home. I had one of those old-fashioned paper calendars on my bedside table, the ones where you rip off the day. I wanted the date staring back at me the instant I woke up."

To Oliver's surprise, she grinned. "Did you call those calendars 'old fashioned'?" She pointed to her desk where, next to her laptop, sat a squat, day-to-day calendar showing the date in large, black numerals.

Their laughter set free some of the tension.

"Look, Oliver," Julianne said, pulling the tortured napkin from him and replacing it with her hand. "The reality is, this is just our fourth date. I don't deserve or need or even want to know all of your deep, dark secrets." She squeezed his hand to stop him from feeling too much relief. "But I do need to know the broad strokes. You should have told me already. My sons depend on me to make smart decisions, and I need to know what I'm getting into."

His fingers wandered over the veins in her wrist. "You're right. I'm sorry." He looked up into her eyes, moved her still-damp curls behind an ear. "It doesn't excuse the fact that I waited too long, but I was going to tell you tonight. I want you to know me."

"I believe you."

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, closing his eyes, as if simple faith and trust was more than he was used to.

He let go of her hand and reached for the bottle of wine. Filling their glasses, he said, "So...the broad strokes?"

While they steadily emptied the bottle, Oliver told her about the explosion on his father's boat that killed the crew, his father, and the young woman he'd brought aboard and sent him out to sea. He told her about his helplessness on the island, and then touched on the adversaries that made him stronger. One of those adversaries followed Oliver back to Starling City, determined to destroy him by stealing his company, killing his mother and tearing apart his city.

"I understand the Arrow got involved?"

Oliver nodded without looking up.

"Is it strange having an arrow-shooting vigilante protecting your town?"

"No stranger than living in a town that needs one." He shook his head, staring down at his wine glass. "I was blindly naive growing up. I had a mother and a father who spoiled me and a city that was my personal playground. Pain, loss, hate...I thought those were just four-letter words reserved for losers."

Julianne leaned over to run her hand down the warm length of his arm, to wipe away the self disgust she heard in his voice. "I'm so sorry you lost your mom. And your dad. They would be so proud of the man you've turned into."

Oliver plucked her hand from his arm and folded it between both of his. "And I'm sorry you lost your husband."

Like a knee jerk, Julianne tried to tug her hand from his. "Thanks. I'm fine. It's..." He compressed her hand, held her tight.

"Julianne."

She stared down at his clenched hold.

"Julianne." Slowly she raised her eyes to face. His perfect, still lips, his slightly off-center nose -- the victim of a break -- and his ocean-blue eyes, trained on her and powerful even in the soft light of the candles. He looked at her as if all of his hopes were pinned on the next few moments.

"Don't hide from me," he said softly. Resolutely.

Julianne's body twanged like a violin string.

This one man had offered to join her behind her widow's shroud. From that dark place, he'd played with her and made her laugh and held up a mirror to show her all the wonderful things she still had to offer. Now, this one man was asking her to come from behind the shroud. To step into the light and reveal herself to him.

This one man had never asked her to leave Jamie behind in the dark.

When her body relaxed, so did Oliver's hold. She twined her fingers together, clenched her hands between her knees as she lowered her head and closed her eyes. The ocean-and-spice scent of him, mixed with the sound of the rain, soothed her.

"I loved Jaime," she said quietly, eyes still closed. "It's what all married women are supposed to say, that they love their husband. But I had something even better." She opened her eyes and looked at Oliver. "I liked him. I liked him more every day I spent with him." Her eyes asked him to understand how big that was, how rare it is that two people still enjoy each other's company after years together. "He made me feel...clever and funny and interesting. I was the best version of myself when I was with him."

She looked down again. "When he died, I was afraid he took the best parts of me with him."

From that still and crouched position on the stool, with the candle votives pooling into wax in their cups, Julianne told stories of her life with and without Jaime: how he'd walked to her house in the rain to deliver a poem after their first fight; how he'd done the same to propose, dripping and on his knees on the front porch. During her first labor, Jaime had powered through 16 hours of breathing and two hours of messy pushing, waiting until their son was sweet and clean in the crib before he passed out. They'd fought to be the kind of people they wanted to be in the sometimes plastic, power-and-money aesthetic of Northern Virginia, and when the host of a dinner party proposed that the men leave the '"little ladies" to go out on the deck and smoke cigars, Jaime had laughed, slung his arm around Julianne's shoulders and said it was time to leave.

She told Oliver about the hereditary heart issues in Jamie's family. But Jaime had been tested. "They said he was fine," she said, not realizing it came out like a plea.

She told Oliver something she'd never told anyone: She'd held on to her husband's clothes for months so that, on particularly bad days, after her children had left for school, she could pile his clothes on their closet floor and lie in them, surrounding herself in his presence and scent. She wouldn't leave the pile until minutes before her sons got home.

She didn't know when her talk had dissolved into tears, when Oliver had gotten up and surrounded her in his arms. All she knew was that she was sobbing, pressed against a strength willing to share her sorrow, at least for these few dark hours. As the rain cocooned her home and Oliver's arms kept her safe, Julianne cried for her lost love and her lost dreams and for the woman who she thought she could keep strong by not feeling or planning or dreaming. Or crying.

As her heart settled and her tears calmed, Oliver handed her a linen napkin without letting her go. Julianne wiped her eyes and her nose, rested her forehead against his shoulder. If she had been through Hell the last three years, then having eau de Oliver Queen to inhale at the end of a crying jag must surely be her well-deserved bit of of Heaven.

She didn't realize she'd said it out loud until she heard Oliver chuckle in her ear.

She was surprised at herself. To make a joke? Now?! But her heart felt weirdly light. Like a limb after being freed from a cast.

Oliver kissed the corner of her eye, where she could feel her eyelashes were still wet with tears. He kissed her forehead. He tilted her head up to kiss the tip of her nose, which she tried to pull away from with a hand-waving, "I look awful." Determined, he kissed her cheek. He gathered her jaw in both hands and raised her lips to his.

"Thank you," he said, the last of the candlelight fluttering in his brilliant blue eyes. He kissed her lips. The kiss was sweet and soft and gentle.

It brought something roaring to life in Julianne. Kisses. Her hands spasmed at his sides. Soothing, warming, life-affirming kisses. She wrapped a hand around his nape, pulled his head down to hers. Lips on lips, skin on skin, breath to breath. She savored his lip, avidly tasted his teeth and his tongue and his mouth. She loved kissing. She hoisted herself up, gripped him with her knees, felt him stagger back and sit on his stool. She thought she never wanted to kiss again. Straddling Oliver, dominant, Julianne tilted his head back with both hands and took his mouth, desperately wanting to give and take pleasure.

She thought she never wanted to kiss again before she kissed this one man.

Raising herself, Julianne snaked a hand between them and tugged the sheet free, leaving Oliver Queen naked and hard beneath her, naked and hard in her kitchen with a sheet floating beneath him and the candles going out and the rain beating against the windows and the spice of his kindness and her tears and their combustible attraction filling the air.

Still controlling their kiss, she sat back into his lap, rubbing the damp cleft of her satin panties down his hardness. Oliver's powerful hands dug greedily under her shirt, grabbed her hips, helped her rub against him. She flicked her hips, positioned him so he could push hard against where she desperately wanted him to go. Oliver pulsed her down on him.

Their hands and mouths and bodies strained together in a sudden flash of mutual desperation.

Her hand slid down her belly to her panties. it would be so easy. Push her panties to the side, rise up, sink down and then...Oliver Queen would be inside of her. Soothing her aching wetness. So easy.

She hooked her finger into the satin.

"Julianne," he rumbled into her mouth.

"I want to," she panted.

"I do too." But he held her hips tightly, held her still. His shoulders had turned to silk-covered marble beneath her hands.

"I'm safe," she said, in case he was concerned about the lack of a condom.

He growled a husky laugh. "Beautiful, tricky lady, you are anything but safe." He lifted her off of him.

"No," Julianne helplessly pleaded, reaching for him. "Don't..."

"Don't worry." He stood her on the floor facing away from him, stripped her of her nightshirt, pressed her back against his hot, naked body. "You're gonna get it."

A shadow of menace wove into her desire, and Julianne had to grip the island to support her jellied knees.

"Good girl," he purred into her ear. "Bend over more."

It wasn't what she expected for their first time. But she was a trembling, eager, weak thing as he tugged her panties down her legs, and she would take it however she could get it. She bent forward, firmed her hold on the island, and raised her hips to offer herself up to him. She spread her legs.

"Too far," he murmured. He grabbed her hips. She jumped as she felt his hardness slide between her legs, a brand against her wetness. He tapped her thigh, urged her to close her legs around him. And then he pulled his hips back, pushed them forward again, spreading himself in copious moisture and creating a sweet friction of sensation in her most sensitive flesh.

He slung a heavy arm around her breasts and forced her up and back against him. With the candles all burned out, he was a dark stranger at her back.

The man from that Island breathed a dark promise into her ear. "I'm not putting myself inside of you," he growled, clenching her against him. "But I'm taking advantage of you every other way. You're gonna pay for all the times you've made me say no. You're gonna feel me between your legs for weeks; every time you move you'll remember all the ways I made you scream."

And then, grabbing her hand and shoving it between her legs with his own, he showed her one way to madness: he pulsed against her, agitating her with his fingers and his shaft, urging her to stroke his wet tip every time it pressed against her palm. If this was punishment, it was sweet and Julianne was frantic to help Oliver deliver it. They moved like one body, trembled together, found a rhythm that killed them both and then, lips clinging and skin slapping, found room-spinning fulfillment together. Oliver's groan was still ringing in Julianne's ear when he pulled from between her clenched thighs, threw her over his shoulder like she was spoils from war and carried her upstairs, his fingers getting to work before he even had her back on the mattress.

Oliver had been right; it wasn't that late. The madness descended for hours.

The power never came back on that night. It was only when Oliver surprised her out of an exhausted doze that Julianne realized the sun was coming up; she could see the acre of bronze chest beneath her thanks to the early sunlight slipping through a gap in her blinds.

Oliver had just asked her when her youngest was graduating from high school.

"In...four years," she answered, surprised by the huskiness in her voice. All the screaming had strained it. "Why?"

His big hand stroked her spine. "Starling City could use a good caterer." His voice was rough, too. "I personally know of a Fortune 200 company that would hire you."

Her heavy head moved so she could rest her chin on his chest, look into his tired blue eyes. She hadn't seen that beautiful face in hours.

"Hi," she murmured.

He pushed her hair out of her face. "Hey."

"I'll be 44," she said.

That slow, sweet grin. "I'm glad I didn't fuck the math skills out of you."

"Or the smart-assery out of you."

He rolled them over slowly, settled between her thighs, burrowed his arms beneath her and laid his head between her breasts. Wrapping her arms and legs around him felt as natural as breathing.

He relaxed against her. "Just think about it," he said as he closed his eyes. Her body rose and fell with his breaths, the movement of his big chest. He was asleep in a minute.

She held him against her. Protected the sleep of this indomitable man. And answered him before her own sleep could claim her.

"I already am."


	5. Fifth Date

Trees decked in brilliant oranges and reds blurred past Oliver as he maneuvered his Kawasaki ZX-14R streetbike neatly between a Subaru and a contractor van to get to the stretch of open highway in front of them. Freed, he hit the throttle and pushed the bike up to 80 mph.

He was going to be in plenty of time for his plane. But this warm burst of Indian summer in November, the smell of fall leaves, and the anticipation Oliver felt for the weekend begged for a fast ride.

Begged as desperately as Julianne when he'd had his head between her legs and nothing but his breath on her...

Oliver grinned from inside his black helmet, fought the urge to shift himself on the leather seat. Going 80 mph on a precision-built machine was not the time to have to adjust himself.

"Down boy," he thought. He had all weekend.

He was taking her to a B&B in a quaint Colonial town in Northern Virginia. They might visit some of the microbreweries in the area. They might hike the Shenandoah. They might poke into some of the antique shops, if she was into that kind of thing.

Or he might lock the door and fuck her all weekend. He'd reserved the entire Victorian home and insured that the owners would deliver breakfast and then go away. Maybe he should have cleared out the surrounding homes as well. In case Julianne got loud again.

He was going to make sure she got loud again.

He slowed down to 70 mph, since his brain seemed pretty single-minded about what it wanted to think about.

Those dark hours in her home a month ago had been some of the most amazing of his life. Before the Island, he'd gorged on sex like a greedy, gluttonous boy. His body had been nothing more than a fork to take part in the feast. But the Island had transformed how he thought of his body: he recognized the miracle of its survival, the almost limitless capacity of its potential, its power to cause pain and suffering. Julianne had allowed him to revel in its gift to bring joy and pleasure. She'd looked at his scars, heard his story, and then kissed or ignored his wounds like they were no different than his kneecap or that tendon she liked to bite in his neck. She'd forgiven him, she'd accepted him and then she'd annihilated him with a thousand creative uses of her fingers and mouth and that sweet, wet place between her thighs.

He was afraid he could never look at a PTA mom again without getting hard, now that he knew what tricksy ways they hid. He saluted a mini van as he passed it.

He and Julianne agreed that silence was the best response to that horrible blog post. The Washington Post hadn't run anything; before he'd flown out of Starling City that day, furious, he'd empowered his attorneys to offer the Post an exclusive interview about his time on the Island in exchange for not printing anything about the widowed Julianne Schneider. Julianne didn't know this; she didn't need to. She'd told him in emails that she'd explained it to her family and had been asked few questions by friends. Her sons had taken it surprisingly well, and Oliver wondered how "nothing serious" she'd made of their relationship. However, he was secretly pleased when Felicity informed him about a flurry of "Oliver Queen" Google searches originating from an IP address in Boonsboro, Maryland, the tiny town where Julianne's parents lived. They didn't believe the relationship was "nothing serious."

Neither did Felicity.

Oliver signaled to take the exit to the airport access road and felt the first grey cloud of the day. Diggle and Laurel were concerned about this out-of-town "situation," about the distraction, about the security risks to his secret identity and Julianne's family if that identity was discovered. But both of them had been through enough to understand Oliver's need for an escape hatch.

But Felicity was angry, and her anger was thick and solid and womanly. The forlorn eyes and the quickly wiped tears were a thing of the past. Now she kept her chin high as she glared at him. She still reported to work every day, in their sunlit, mile-high office and in their dark, underground lair, and she still did an excellent job. But it was all work.

He didn't want to hurt her. He kept saying it; it sounded endlessly lame and pathetic but he kept meaning it. He couldn't be what she needed, couldn't give her the life she deserved with both eyes trained on the safety of Starling City, and he couldn't ask her to wait until some unknown time when The Arrow was no longer needed. He never wanted children, would never allow them to be used like his mother, and he couldn't ask her to forgo that, too.

Julianne asked so little of him. Just thinking her name cleared the frenetic static that clouded his brain whenever he thought of a relationship with Felicity. What Felicity wanted from him. What he wanted from Felicity. What fate and duty wouldn't let him have.

The buzz from the Bluetooth in his helmet, the name that popped up on his bike's control panel, reminded him that it was a summer-warm, blue sky day.

His thumb tapped a button on the handlebar as he passed the airport entrance sign. "I'm going to be on time, so don't be asleep on the couch when I show up," he said when the call connected. "If you answer the door braless again, you're losing another shirt."

"Oliver." Julianne's voice was high and tight. And shaking.

He squeezed the brakes. "What's wrong?"

"Oliver, I..."

"Hello, Mr. Queen. Do exactly as I say and your new girlfriend will be fine."

Oliver braked into the gravel of the shoulder, sending up a plume of dust. "What have you done?" He fought to keep the growl of The Arrow out of his voice. He was Oliver Queen, useless, billionaire playboy. He wasn't a man who knew how find this cultured, accented voice and insert an arrow just far enough into the soft spot between the clavicles to keep him bleeding and in agony for days.

"Nothing beyond freeing your lady from the duties of her housework for a few hours," the voice said pleasantly. "If you behave appropriately, no one will ever know she was gone."

Boots in the gravel, Oliver clenched his handlebars. They must have waited until Julianne's sons were picked up by her parents. They knew she and Oliver were going to spend the weekend together.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing but what we're owed. We'd like our money back."

"What money?"

"The $42 million from two offshore accounts in the Caymans. I understand you're no longer in possession of it, after you flittered it between different charities. But it did route through your computer system. We'd like it back. And in the future, avoid any impulse to get involved with The Arrow and his do-gooder work. That beast is trouble."

The sex slave traffickers wanted their $42 million back. The job had been a good one, clean: Oliver, Diggle and Roy had rescued several local runaway girls who'd been chained awaiting transport, and then dismantled the traffickers kidnapping and delivery system in Starling City; Laurel was building an impenetrable case against the local kingpin; and Felicity had found the last of the money supporting the international network and had distributed it to runaway shelters and helplines around the country. An angry, distracted Felicity.

Oliver had no one to blame but himself for Julianne's kidnapping.

"So we return the money and then..."

"And then you'll have your lovely lady back in time to...how did you put it...'Bang her in every bed in the B&B.' How cute."

Oliver steeled himself against the verification that they'd been reading Julianne's email. They'd stashed her in the D.C. area, probably close to her home. "My company's been in trouble. All my assets aren't liquid. I'll need time." He'd need time to to contact Felicity and Diggle, find Julianne, and tear the throat out of anyone who'd frightened her.

The voice lost its charm. "You have until 9 p.m. If our accounts aren't flush by then, you'll never see her again. Police will eventually get an anonymous phone call leading them to her bloodied t-shirt wrapped in your leather coat. And maybe a part or two...parts that Saudi businessmen won't miss."

All the ugliness Oliver had endured, but it was that threat that had the gorge rising in his throat. He couldn't hold The Arrow back. "If you touch her, I'll kill you."

The voice chuckled. "You're adorable." And then broke the connection.

Oliver closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against yelling her name into his headset. Don't be afraid, he wanted to yell. Hold on. He was coming for her.

But, most importantly, he wanted to beg her to close her eyes when he showed up. His gentle, loving Julianne shouldn't see what he was going to do the men who threatened her. Oliver Queen had been hiding in the shadows with her. Now The Arrow was about to step into the light. With complete certainty, Oliver knew that would put an end to Julianne ever looking at him again.

\----------

Like the dark specter of Death, Oliver stood on top of the marina office and watched the yacht's gun-toting crew ready the boat to embark in the dark. He gripped his bow tightly and heard it sing to him, heard it tell him how easy it would be dispatch five of the thugs before he even got on the boat, before Julianne even had to see what he was capable of. So easy.

It was barely 7 p.m., but the late-November timing worked for him as well as the sex traffickers -- the early fall of deep night, the tethered boats closed up for the season, the empty marina. Oliver's night vision was honed to perfection; he could drop a crew member without the man standing next to him even noticing.

They weren't going to wait until 9 p.m. They never intended to return Julianne. They took her from her warm and comfortable suburban home, carried her thrashing past photos of her sons and parents and husband, with a plan to deliver her into a life of torture, degradation and despair. The arrows in his quiver sang sweetly; the man smoking with the semi-auto strapped across his chest, enjoying a cigarette while Julianne's entire life hung in the balance, would be the first to fall.

In the chill of November air, The Arrow's body thrummed to kill.

He leaped down from the roof, landed on silent feet on the grass, merged with the shadows to make his way to the boats. The sex traffickers had picked their location well: with their superyacht parked at the end of a long pier, anyone crossing the clattering boards would be seen and heard easily. The only other approach, through the water, would be agonizing and quickly deadly on this 30-degree night.

Oliver slipped into the water without a splash.

Although the sex traffickers had bounced Julianne's signal around, Felicity had been able to discover her location: at an Alexandria marina on the Potomac River, which gave the kidnappers an escape route into the Chesapeake Bay and then the open ocean. Both she and Diggle had wanted Oliver to return to the hideout, to spend 30 minutes coming up with a plan before he left for D.C. Talking to them from the gangway, Oliver told them he had what he needed, the extra suit and bow hidden on his bike. He'd given Diggle one command and hoped he'd been able to make it happen. Regardless, he wasn't going to allow Julianne to feel terrified one more second than she had to.

His strokes through the water were strong and sure and silent. He dived deep as he came closer to the yacht, held his breath and used his senses to judge the distance in the black-as-night river. He broke the surface noiselessly.

The anchor was still down. Gripping the line with his gloves, Oliver crept hand-over-hand out of the river, giving the water time to drip quietly out of his leathers, keeping his body tight to prevent any creaking of the line or bump against the side. At the top, his fingers curled over the side of the boat. He hung for a moment, listened for nearby watchmen in the silent night, checked to make sure his hood shadowed his face.

His facelessness was almost as effective a weapon to strike terror as his bow. And a part of him -- the last remnant of that stupid, selfish boy that existed before the Island -- hoped he could salvage something with Julianne if he remained hidden.

He pulled up, checked the deck. The nearest gun-wielding man was 15 feet away, his back to Oliver. Three others were on the deck, prepping. Oliver could hear more men in the now-lit cockpit. They were close enough to disembarking to turn on the lights; they were comfortable they'd avoided detection. Someone was getting coordinates over a radio.

He pulled himself up and over without a sound, had an arrow notched in his bow before he realized he hadn't grabbed a tranq arrow. The arrow was simple, sharp and pointed at the unaware watchman's heart.

He paused a second that he didn't have. Took a breath that his body wanted to resist. And thought about what Julianne would want. Thought about the man he wanted to be, with or without her.

He replaced the killer arrow with one that would put the man into a deep and unpleasant sleep.

The four men on deck went down quickly but with a clatter. He ran to catch the watchman on the port side; the idiot had been so close to the edge that he'd almost gone over into the drink. There was a line of how far Oliver would go to preserve the lives of these scumbags, and hopping back into the Potomac crossed it. As he laid the man down on the deck, he hoped the prep to leave had distracted those in the cockpit from the noise.

It hadn't.

Oliver heard the clatter of a guard coming down the steps from the upper deck and then that millisecond pause -- that aiming pause -- before he slipped his body against the side of the boat and let the man he'd saved from the Potomac take the gunshots. Whether he lived or died now was not Oliver's concern. Two long leaps in the shadows and he was at the steps, dropping his bow to use the railing to swing upwards, to disarm the guard and break his nose with two upside down kicks. Oliver landed back on his feet and stepped away to allow the man to topple at his feet. He picked up his bow and used the thug's back to launch himself up the steep, metal stairs.

An oar came swinging out from the upper deck. Oliver lurched out to avoid it, ducked under and rolled onto the deck. A hard bash with his bow against a knee and the man was flat out on the fiberglass floor with him. Oliver leaped onto his fat stomach and hugely enjoyed the three hard, succinct punches to the man's face, two more than necessary.

His footsteps to move behind the cockpit door were featherlight; he opened it quickly and let bullets fly into the night air. He swung around the door, leading with a slash of his bow into the sizable cockpit, and quickly assessed its occupants with the cold eye of a killer: Julianne tied to the captain's chair, a short man with a knife to her neck, a black-shirted bodyguard who didn't react to the smack of the bow.

The bodyguard's open palm struck out to slam into the artery in Oliver's neck; Oliver blocked it with crossed forearms, grabbed the palm to twist it around the man's back. The man slammed the back of his head between Oliver's eyes; Oliver staggered back, into a table set elegantly with plates and wine and a large vase of flowers. They were going to romance Julianne before they cut and raped her. He grabbed the vase and slammed it into the bodyguard's face. It broke into a million stabbing pieces, raining flowers onto the floor.

He kicked the screaming man out of the cockpit before he slammed the door closed behind him and locked it.

The voice-changer engineered into his suit automatically turned his words into an ominous growl. "Let her go." he said, as he watched the man cower behind Julianne with a knife to her throat. In his early-50s, the man had slicked his long grey hair back and was wearing a black, silk shirt and Italian wool suit. And he looked like he was going to be sick. "You've seen how easily I can make people hurt."

So had Julianne. There, with zipties attaching her wrists to the arms of the captain's chair, Julianne had seen it all through the expansive view of the cockpit windows. She'd seen how effortlessly Oliver became a monster.

"The threat would be more effective if you'd broken some necks." That urbane, cultured voice from the phone call was now scared shitless. But, coming from behind Julianne, using her as a shield, it was still annoying as hell. "The word is out. The Arrow no longer kills its prey."

With lightening speed, Oliver had his bow up, an arrow screaming death against the string. "I said let her go." So many of these assholes wanted to banter. So many of these sick fuckers wanted to revel in what they did, wanted to discuss it because they believed their deficit of human decency made them superior.

"It appears we both have something we want. You'd like your lady friend back. I'd like to leave here unharmed. Perhaps we ..."

The man's words faded as the urge to kill sang to Oliver more seductively than it had since he'd faced Slade Wilson. An arrow into the man's jowly cheek, the blood-shot portion of his eye, would relax the sharp knife at her throat. Her skin was milk white, her eyes unbelievably wide. He realized he'd heard not one sound from her since he'd boarded the boat. She was in shock.

Tonight was their fifth date. He'd planned on making love to her tonight. Finally inside of her, he was going to convince her of the need for more dates, had planned devious uses of his body to get a yes from her, certain she'd enjoy the convincing as much as he. And, in the course of those many ease-filled dates, he'd wanted to discuss a future, a time when Julianne could move to Starling City and bring the gift of her peace with her.

Instead, he'd given Julianne threat and terror and a fine trickle of blood running down her beautiful throat.

The Arrow reacted; disarm and maim, do nothing that would splash gore on the woman. The man screamed as an arrow appeared in his shoulder, a body fragment that he'd allowed to rise up from behind the woman during his monologue.

The knife clattered to the floor. The woman did not react.

The Arrow swooped behind the unmoving woman, pushed the gibbering man to the floor, retracted his knife from his boot and held it above the man's eyes. No, first the hands. He'd cut off the hands that had touched the woman. Then the tongue that had threatened her. Then the eyes that had seen her as something to defile.

With a knee against the flailing man's chest, the Arrow pushed the man's pudgy hand against the floor. Focused his knife over the wrist.

The butt of a semi-automatic shattered the window in the door.

The Arrow turned. As an arm came through the broken window to unlock the door, only Oliver's last-moment intervention allowed the knife to twang into the wall instead of the intruder's forehead. Oliver recognized the black body suit and weapon.

Diggle had pulled through. Operatives of Argus, that secret international organization that Oliver needed as much as he despised, swarmed the boat in black body suits and night vision goggles. These scumbags, the last of a decades-old sex trafficking operation, would wake in the deepest dungeons of hell, only allowed to see the light when Argus had use for them, when Argus would use them as slaves.

Oliver picked up the leader, who'd urinated in his Italian wool suit, and pushed him at the operative. The man was dragged moaning out of the cockpit without a word.

Julianne didn't move. He pulled the knife from the wall, returned to kneel at her side. Maybe if he kept his hood on, he thought as he cut through the zipties at her wrists. He moved in front of her, kept his head bent low as he cut at the zipties at her ankles. Maybe if got her back to her house, said nothing...

And then what? Found a phone booth where he could change into his billionaire disguise? Show up minutes later hoping his thick-rimmed glasses fooled her, hoping the secret identity of that boy he'd lost on the Island was big enough to hide the monster she'd seen tonight?

Her limbs free, he slipped the knife back into his boot. On his knees, he rested back on his heels. And raised his head.

The cabin light shined brightly on his face. She didn't react. Slowly, he pulled back the hood. His hair was wet. Her face was so pale. He reached up with one, green, leather-covered hand. Grasped the mask between his fingers. Pulled it from his face.

Julianne's large, dark eyes blinked. Her dilated pupils contracted. "Oliver?"

The petite hand that reached out trembled. The palm that stroked his scruff was so, so cold.

And then her face crumbled and her body lost its moorings and she collapsed out of the chair into him. As Argus silently cleared the ship of its trash, Oliver cradled Julianne in his lap on the floor and held her against him as she sobbed.

\----------

Oliver nudged Julianne's bedroom door open with the tray, walked through and closed it again with his foot. Mid-day light -- it was almost noon -- snuck through the blinds, giving her room a powdery glow. He put the breakfast tray on her vanity top, next to a framed school photo of one of her boys and a delicate rack of hanging necklaces. One of the necklaces was made of macaroni.

He looked at the reflection of her room in the mirror, of the woman nestled under her covers. This dark pleasure den from a month ago was, in the daylight, a rose-painted and floral-decorated retreat for a lady, a lady loved fiercely by the many people whose photos and mementos filled the room.

The ivy-printed duvet shifted; a delicate hand emerged from the covers.

Oliver picked up the steaming mug of coffee, pale with Splenda and skim milk, and turned to the bed. In jeans and t-shirt, what he slept in, he walked around to her side, sat on the edge.

For one priceless moment, when she opened her eyes, she looked at him with joy, with pleasure at seeing him there, with delight at seeing the offering of coffee in his hand. For one never-repeated moment, he got a glimpse of how she would have, could have, looked at him for many mornings to come.

And then she remembered. Like a black veil falling over her face, Julianne remembered what had happened and what he was and what his secrets had put her through. She remembered and she sat up and she moved imperceptibly away from him. She still accepted the coffee.

Oliver watched her sip, took in the oversized flannel nightshirt that made her look like she was 12, her mussed deep-brown hair and swollen, red-rimmed eyes. And he mourned.

After Argus's departure last night left the ship empty and creaking, Oliver had wanted to take her to the hospital to get her checked out. Still crying, Julianne had put her foot down: no hospitals, no doctors. She just wanted to go home. In her bedroom, he'd changed her into her pajamas like a father and, after he'd changed, intended to watch over her sleep from her bedroom chaise. But Julianne had pulled him down to her without a word, and hadn't let go of him all night. He'd held her in his arms and tortured himself with thoughts of what she would have been going through if he hadn't gotten to her in time.

"I feel so stupid," Julianne said looking into her cup, her voice scratchy.

For believing in him. For trusting him.

"I just opened the door to them; I didn't even check the peephole. When they threw me into the trunk, I just lay there. I couldn't believe what was happening."

She looked up at Oliver. He hated to see what was dawning there, the understanding that the world hid vast evil. "I watch CSI, I always thought I'd be...wily. But I just...sat there. I couldn't even fight. I just wanted it to be over."

"Did they hurt you?" When he'd removed her clothes last night, he looked for the tell-tale signs: bruising around her wrists and the tops of her thighs. If he'd found them, not even Argus could have protected those men from his rage. But, even without bruising, there were dozens of intricate ways to violate a woman.

Her eyes dropped back to her cup, where her thumbnail scratched at its surface. She shook her head. "They didn't touch me."

"Julianne." It was a request and a command all at once. He needed to see the truth in her eyes.

She raised her memories to him. "They didn't hurt me." She took a breath. "But they were going to. There was a drug in the food and the wine. They said it would make it easier on me. And I was going to eat and drink. I thought, if I could survive the boat trip, maybe I could make it back. Maybe I could still get back to my boys."

Oliver took the coffee cup from her and pulled her against him, felt every one of her tears as a scorching lash against his conscience. "I'm sorry," he murmured as he stroked her hair. "I'm so sorry."

When her tears mellowed, she rested her nose against his shoulder.

"You look good in leather," she said, muffled against his t-shirt.

His hand squeezed her nape. He stroked down, savoring the feel of her slim back, knowing it was going to be the last time he touched her. He kissed the top of her head. And stood.

"Is there anyone you'd like me to call?" he asked.

She shook her head as she looked up at him. As she stared up at him with dark, open, luminous eyes.

"You'll be safe now. Your kidnappers are...gone, and my associates will be keeping an eye on you and your family for a few months." He'd talked to Diggle this morning, and Argus had agreed to watch over Julianne in exchange for some freelance work from the Arrow. He took a card out of his back pocket and placed it on Julianne's bedside table. "Call this number if you have any problems." The call would be answered by Felicity; the world might stop on its axis.

"Oliver?"

He took two steps back from the bed. He clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists. The V of her nightshirt showed him a sweet shadow.

"You're not stupid, Julianne. I am. I thought I could be a new man in a new place with you. I thought I could leave the Arrow and his nightmares in Starling City. But they follow me everywhere I go. They scared you. I never wanted you to be afraid."

He took two more steps back; wished her soft hair wasn't obscuring her beautiful face.

"Oliver?"

He wrenched his eyes off of her, turned to grab the door knob. "I'll miss you," he whispered.

"You're not even going to kiss me goodbye?"

Her plea was soft, filled with yearning. So much like the Julianne who used to want him. He could have mangled the knob in his hand. "To what end?" he growled into the door. "So I can be reminded of all the things I can't have? So I can be tempted to convince you to keep me? So I can seduce you into needing what my body can give you, and hating yourself because you're putting your family in jeopardy?"

"Because we love each other," she said simply.

Without conscious thought, Oliver pushed off the door, took giant strides across the room, and gathered Julianne into his arms, pulling her onto her knees to kiss her succulently, to take her mouth and show her how much he adored her, needed her, wanted her. How much he'd miss her. Her mouth held nothing back, gave Oliver her love in return. She shuddered against him; Oliver tasted her tears.

He let go of her arms, released her lips and left her bedroom. He closed her bedroom door behind him so he couldn't hear her cry.


	6. Sixth Date

As he watched the family at the Chinese restaurant laugh and scream as the waiter chopped the Peking Duck's head off, Oliver pointed the remote at the screening room projector and turned the film off, plunging himself into a murky grey darkness broken up only by the white light of the projector bulb. He leaned back in the movie leather lounge chair, picked up his rocks glass from the cup holder. Knocked back two fingers of expensive bourbon.

He should have known better than to try to watch "A Christmas Story" by himself.

It had always been his favorite, the boy with all the friends and the mom who wraps up her kid so tightly he can't put his arms down and the dad who wants to teach his kid how to change a tire. Little Thea loved whatever her big brother Ollie loved and she'd made all of them -- his dad, his mom -- sit down and watch it together every Christmas season.

Driving home tonight, past neighbors' estates glowing with Christmas lights, past holiday parties he'd not returned RSVPs to, he'd pulled up to his dark and empty home and figured the movie might cheer him up.

Instead he was sitting here as haunted by what he'd lost and who he'd hurt as any Scrooge. He should have watched "A Christmas Carol." He could have turned it off before the unrealistic happy ending.

His phone buzzed in his back pocket. Thank God. He lurched up to fish it out of his jeans. He'd sunk so low that the potential for disaster thrilled him, that others' pain and misery was something he hoped for so that he wouldn't have to be alone with himself. Happy Holidays!

He blinked when he saw who it was from, the light from the screen glowing on his face. Maybe...he blinked again, but the name, the message was still there.

JULIANNE

_I have one question to ask you._

He typed back hesitantly. _What?_

_Where's the doorbell on this thing?_

He fumbled out of his seat. Not even the Arrow could get out of a giant reclining lounge chair with grace.

_Or a knocker? Don't castles have knockers?_

He raced out into the hall, typed as he rushed down the stairs. _What knockers!_

They both loved "Young Frankenstein." He risked breaking his neck on the sweeping staircase so he could banter with her.

 _Thank you doctor_ , his phone buzzed back immediately.

He hit the lights when he reached the bottom of the stairs, let the chandelier above the massive entryhall glow for her. Then he grabbed the iron latch and tugged his front door open. As surprising as an unexpected Christmas gift hidden behind a desk, more beautiful than a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time, Julianne Schneider stood on his front stoop. She raised her mittened hand and smiled.

"Hi," she said.

He let out an astonished huff of laughter. "Hi." He looked her over, from her soft fall of dark hair to the elegant black coat that sleeked over her from neck to toes, checking to make sure she was real and not some fantasy concocted by his lonely brain. "Want to come in?"

"That'd be nice," she said with a soft smile.

As she walked past him, he smelled crisp winter cold mixed with her perfume, flowers and honey. She was real; the smell warmed him from the inside out. He buried his hands in his back pockets, nudged the door closed with his shoulder. Fought the urge to grab her.

She laid her purse and mittens on the round mahogany table in the middle of the entryway. "I'm glad you're home."

"Yeah?" His fingers clenched the pockets.

She slowly turned to face him, the chandelier light striking off the silver hoops in her ears, the gloss on her lips, the warm yet hesitant look in her eyes. "I didn't know what I was going to do if you were spending the holidays in Aruba or something. Billionaires do that, right?"

"Not this billionaire."

That click of understanding, of how his real life didn't fit into this elegantly opulent entryway, came over her face. "Right. I guess you don't get to take many vacations."

He couldn't help himself. "I've taken a few in D.C. recently."

He let the memories of their lost time together -- those dark, long nights -- show in his eyes, linger in his voice. She bit her full lower lip. She wouldn't look away.

He wanted to provoke her. He wanted a declaration from her. He wanted to topple her back onto that table and raise her coat to her hips and use his tongue on her responsive body until she screamed that she would never leave him. That she would never let him go.

But he couldn't imagine she'd come here to say that. And she had come, all the way to Starling City, and he was happy to see her and happy that she looked at him with warmth instead of fear or hate. He could make this easier on her. He could be content with just enjoying her company again, for as many moments as she would allow, even if another crappy month of feeling miserable was the price he had to pay.

He took his hands out of his back pockets. "Can I take your coat? Would you like a glass of wine."

Her face relaxed. "That would be lovely."

He led her into the sitting room, hung up her coat and opened the bottle of wine that Raisa always left out near the crystal decanters, as if they still lived in a home where guests dropped by unannounced, guests who might want something with less wallop than whiskey. He poured Julianne a full goblet; he wouldn't force it down her throat, but he wasn't above getting her drunk to keep her there.

"You don't have any Christmas decorations," she observed as he handed her the glass and sat down on the opposite end of the brocade sofa with her, keeping the safe distance of a cushion between them. "I expected the place to be festooned in live holly or something?"

"Festooned?" He cocked a grin as he took a drink of his wine.

"Sure," she said as she tucked her thick hair behind an ear. "Houses get decorated; mansions get festooned."

God, he'd missed her. "Good to know. Our housekeeper wanted to 'festoon.' I told her she didn't need to. It's just the two of us."

"Your sister still hasn't turned up."

Julianne obviously had been reading up on him. He would have liked to believe that she missed him, that she'd been thinking of him as much as he'd tried not to think of her. More than likely, she'd simply been reading up on the oddity she'd encountered. It's not every day one gets finger fucked by a masked avenger.

"I know where Thea is," Oliver said. "She's safe. Earlier this year she...discovered I'd been hiding things from her. She needs some time."

"I know how she feels."

Julianne smiled softly at him from the corner of the brocade coach, looking relaxed in her slim black pants and white button-up shirt. She'd kicked off a ballet flat and tucked her foot beneath her. She wasn't smiling at him like she thought he was an oddity.

"What about your family?" he said abruptly. "There've been no problems?"

Julianne shook her head "no" as she took a sip of her wine. She lowered her glass and it left her top lip ruby and wet. She wiped it as she said, "But my 14 year old made an off-handed comment about seeing the same woman at the ice cream shop, the football game and waiting for the public bus outside of his school. I got an unsigned note in the mailbox the next day telling me not to be concerned."

Oliver took a heavy breath. "I'm so sorry." Maybe that's why she was here, to ask him to call off the guard dogs and their creepy reminders of a night she wanted to forget.

"Don't be. I'm all for Big Brother in this scenario. Thank you for setting it up."

"You're thanking me? You wouldn't have needed Big Brother if I hadn't done what I did to you."

She tilted her head. "And what did you do to me?" She was staring at him with her deep, dark eyes.

His glass clicked down hard on the brass coffee table. "I lied to you." She was really going to do this. "I jeopardized your safety and the safety of your children." She was going to make him numerate every way he'd wronged her. "I tried to use you to create a fantasy life that I can't have. I --"

She cut him off. "You made me feel beautiful. You made me feel precious and desirable." She also put down her glass. "You made me stop feeling sorry for myself. Instead of letting me wallow in self-pity because I'd lost Jaime, you forced me remember how lucky I was to love him. You were right, I was hiding. And what an insult that was to his name and his memory and his children."

He would have been less shocked, less reeling, if she'd punched him in the face.

She looked down, rubbed her fingers over her knee. "I've thought about it over the last month. The Arrow wouldn't go into a situation blind, not with everything he's carrying on his shoulders." She looked up at Oliver from under her fall of hair. "You knew more about me than you let on. And you still showed up for that first date. You still chased me out of that restaurant when you could have let me and my problems go. You chose me." She placed a slim hand against her chest, where a simple silver heart showed in the V of her shirt. "Oliver Queen, the Arrow, a noble, beautiful, worthy man, chose me. Do you have any idea what a gift that is?"

He didn't. He hadn't. But she made him feel like he was a gift. She made him feel...how did she put it? Precious.

Her next words doused that warmth like ice water.

"I've placed another ad," she said.

His face felt numb. "You have?"

"For servers. I'm catering a wedding next month."

His blood started to flow again. Feeling returned to his face. "Jesus," he muttered. "You did that on purpose."

Her grin was evil. "Maybe a little."

With predatory intent the Arrow put his hands on the couch and stalked toward her. Julianne put her hand out, against his hard chest. Her dark eyes met his.

"You know I'm not for keeps, right?"

He was going to need to tie a string to his emotions, the way they were yo-yoing around. He began to retreat to his end of the couch when Julianne grabbed his forearm.

"Oliver, look at me." She tugged at him. "Look at me." He looked at her, but he could feel the arctic freeze in his eyes, the wall he was beginning to build.

"You're so good at seeing me that you named instantly why I can't be with you. My kids. Without them, I'd take the risk, but that's useless speculation. Oliver..."

He grabbed his glass, stood up, started across the room. He was going to need more wine.

"Oliver, stop."

He swung around. She stood up, too.

"You don't have to be alone," she said, her fingers twisting in front of her.

Dark, humorless laughter rolled out of him. "Oh really?" he mocked. "I can have someone? Just not you. Look, I'm glad you're safe and you don't hate me and I'm sure that in a couple of months, I'll be really proud I helped you grow, but right now, I'm a guy spending the holidays alone in an unfestooned castle."

"It won't always be this way."

He knew she was funny, just not this funny. He laughed again, cruelly. "What crystal ball do you have that I don't?"

"Do you actually believe the Arrow isn't having an impact? I saw you on that boat. You single-handedly took down eight, very bad men."

"Eight more will take their place, beautiful."

She crossed her arms over her white shirt, tilted a hip. "You sound as good at self-pity as me. And stop glowering at me. I've licked ice cream off your tip."

"I've got Haagen-Dazs in the freezer if that will shut you up."

She ignored his deliberate crudity; he sometimes forgot that she was the mother of teenage sons. "It's so much easier to stay still in your misery, isn't it? To ignore the signs of change. The Arrow is changing Starling City. Crime rates are down, the economy is improving. Bad people are starting to fear that The Arrow is lurking in every shadow and the good people are feeling confident that you have their back. It won't be tomorrow, maybe not for a few years, but one day, Starling City won't need its vigilante anymore. The police will be enough to protect this town. And that scares you, doesn't it?"

Oliver swung away from her, set his glass down and gripped the bar. The Arrow and his torments had consumed his life for seven years, a quarter of his life. And while he despised him, hated his dark deeds and woke up sweat-drenched from his dark history, he also didn't know what he'd be without him. A CEO without experience. A grown man with a string of failed relationships. What was he when he wasn't fighting and sacrificing and putting other's needs before his own? Would he regress back to that spoiled, self-consumed child?

With his arms still spread on the bar, he turned his head, spoke to her over his shoulder.

"And if that day comes when I can hang up the hood...will you be with me?"

He heard her bare feet pad up to him across the centuries-old oak floor, felt her chin against his shoulder blade.

"Oliver." She said his name so much. Like she enjoyed the taste of it in her mouth. "I don't want more children."

"I don't want --"

Her arms wrapped around his torso, pulled him tight against her. He could feel her face nuzzling into his back.

"Do you have any idea how much life I wish for you?" she said, resting her cheek against his spine. Her softness and warmth pressed against him. "I want you to awaken someone with first love. I want you to figure out how to partner with someone, and I want them to work just as hard to find that lovely middle ground with you. I want you to look forward to giving someone babies. I want you to know the joy of sitting at the dinner table and watching your family laugh until they cry over some stupid, private joke no one else would understand."

Oliver could imagine it: Julianne and Jaime and their two sons, sitting together in the breakfast nook, bending over their cereal as they howled, Julianne giving that inevitable snort that always embarrassed her.

He shook his head. "The life you're imagining -- your life as mine, with the spouse and the...kids -- it's impossible."

"It's not," she said, squeezing him. "Do you know how wrong it will be if you don't procreate? If you don't pass your brains and beauty and kindness into the human gene pool? It'll just be mean to the rest of us."

She sounded like Felicity. Felicity liked to tease him out of his dark moods. Felicity thought he was capable of more light.

"Oliver, there is a woman out there who will give you more than a respite from your real life. She'll make your real life the only one you want to live. She'll give you peace, but she'll also challenge you and make you laugh and, sometimes, make you want to tear your hair out. And you won't know which version of her you'll like best. I want you to know the wonders of building a family and a future with her. I would never ruin that for you."

Oliver bent his head, dropped an arm to squeeze hers across his midriff, curved his back to pull her closer and feel her surrounding him.

"Turn around," she whispered.

"I don't want to."

"Why?"

"I don't want to watch you leave me."

"Please?"

And when could he deny her? He turned around.

With her arms still holding him tightly, she leaned her head back to look up at him. Her eyes were soft and mysterious, her lips lush and so close.

"I want to let you go so you can focus on your job and clean up this city and find that woman waiting for you. I want you to let me go." He put his hands on her hips, breathed her in and felt the effects of her stronger than the wine. "But I'm afraid we're both going to be haunted unless we do something. Our fifth date didn't go as we planned. I'm going to ask you one more time, and I hope to God you don't say no."

He had denied her. Several times. But not tonight. He squeezed her hips close, ready for her to ask him one last time.

"Oliver, will you make love to me?"

He kept his eyes open as he slowly leaned down, as he surrounded her in his arms and gave her a soft, wet answer. He'd been Oliver Queen in the dark with her. Now he would be Oliver Queen, the Arrow and this mysterious third man she thought he could be in the light. He was going to make love to Julianne Schneider and he didn't want to miss a second of it.

\----------

As Julianne stood at the foot of Oliver's bed and watched him pull open the balcony curtains to let in the bright full moon, turn on a Mission-style amber lap on an end table and flip a switch to light a fire in the marble fireplace, her fingers itched. As he brought a soft, warm light to his princely room, she had to grip her slim pants to keep from grabbing him as he passed her.

_Want._

Oliver was devastating in his patience. She'd seen it that night through her fog, the precise way he'd attacked her attackers, how he'd waited for the man who held a knife to her throat to reveal a vulnerable spot, how The Arrow hadn't wasted a breath or a movement. Watching him fight in dark green leather was like watching choreography, planned and practiced a million times.

The same man moved past her now in a dark plaid shirt and forest-green sweater vest, jeans and workboots, a preppy boy in his ridiculously large bedroom, rustling the air with his ocean-spiced scent. What was he pulling out of the end table? Matches? Was he really going to take the time to light candles?

She stopped him as he made to move past her again, laid a hand against the chest of that soft sweater. Was startled, once again, at the strength and bulk she felt there.

"You're driving me crazy," she said quietly.

"Am I?" When she looked up into his eyes, saw the gleam in his blue gaze and the hint of evil in his grin, she realized he'd been doing it on purpose. Taking his time. Teasing her. Taking this momentous, cataclysmic thing that was about to happen between them and making it...fun.

She grabbed the bottom of his sweater vest and pulled it over his head, mussing his hair and dislodging the matches to the floor. As she attacked the buttons of his shirt, he leaned close to her as he raised his hands to her shirt. "You're always so greedy," he purred close to her ear.

"That's right," she said, knocking his hands away from her. "Me first. This is mine." She ripped the shirt off of him, sending the buttons that held his cuffs together pinging off the hardwood floor. She took a second, just a second, to absorb that chest, those arms, that thick, rippled abdomen capable of so much power. Then she dropped to a knee and began unlacing his workboots, forcing the heat and flow inside of her back to a tolerable simmer. As she stripped off his boots and wool socks, stared down at two long, lean, bronze feet, she thought in disgust that even his feet were perfect.

"You know what they say about big feet?" Oliver murmured above her.

"What?" Julianne asked. Was she really getting wetter? Because of his feet??

"Big feet...big shoes."

She stood and tugged at the worn brown leather belt at his jeans, warmed by his body, unable to look at his face or his torso because, really, if she came just because she was looking at him, she would be humiliated. With all of the romance of an ER nurse, she undid his button fly, grabbed the waistband of his jeans and boxer briefs, and tugged it all down and off his feet. Flung them away.

And then stopped. Breath heavy, she stared. It was hard work undressing a big man. There he was. Her Oliver Queen. Naked in the soft light, blue eyes and wide chest and horrible scars and lovely penis and weirdly perfect feet.

To her surprise, tears filled her eyes. She bit her lower lip to suppress a from-out-of-nowhere sob.

"Julianne." His voice was low and grief-stricken, misery as readily available for him as it was for her.

"No," she said. She shook her head hard, blinking away the tears. "No. Run around the room turning on more lights or something."

He huffed a sorrowful laugh. "No. I think I want to stay right here."

His calloused, fight-nicked hands reached for her, and if her undressing of him had been a demolition derby, his undressing of her was a long, slow dance. His big hands on her buttons were delicate, the brushes of those fingers over her skin so, so gentle. He kneeled at her feet to pull her white, silk panties down her legs, and he made the slide long and sensuous as he stared into her eyes. He gave a soft, single kiss to her knee, her mound, her navel, her breast as he stood again, knees popping.

And then, without touching her, he looked at her in the soft glow of light he'd created. Let those hot, blue eyes meander over her body, absorb and memorize her, and Julianne let him, let her arms relax and her nipples peak and her head list toward her shoulder as she stared and memorized as well.

"You're so beautiful." His husky voice was a vibration that she felt more than she heard.

"You've made me believe that."

"I better have."

She reached out, marveled for a moment at the sight of her small hand on his brawny forearm. He made her feel so...delicate. She caressed down to his hand, pulled it to her. Pressed his fingers against her wetness.

"You have." Warm, welcoming proof of how beautiful he made her feel. She watched his lips falter open, then close and firm at the feel of her. Then he began to move his fingers and it was her turn to gasp.

"I dreamt of this," she murmured as she fought the heaviness of her eyelids, struggling to stay open so she could watch this erotic act, watch his eyes grow hotter, his massive chest move with breaths, his forearm flex as he worked a finger, and then two, inside her without touching her anywhere else.

"You did?" he whispered. His free hand fisted white.

Julianne nodded like she was in a dream. "I spent a week worrying about me and the boys...and then a week worrying about you...ooh...and then a week wanting you like an addict. I'd--I'd wake up coming."

Those two fingers inside her pushed deep and hard. As Julianne's knees gave out, Oliver slung a heavy arm around her and pulled her close.

His voice was strained in her ear. "It's been a month. What did you do the last week?"

Crumbled against his thick chest as his fingers continued to pulse inside of her, Julianne marveled over his beautiful hardness straining between them. She reached for it, ran her fingers down the hot, tight skin. "Put together a...um...wedding menu." Her hand firmed around him, slid him against her palm. "An ex-client...he called needing a caterer for his daughter's ceremony." Loving him with her hand, she looked up into his face. "If it wasn't for you, I would never had said yes. That's when I knew I had to see you."

Both of their hands moved faster and their bodies urged closer together as Oliver's hand gripped her back. "Tell that man...that I'll pay for his daughter's wedding." Oliver's wet fingers pulled out of her and he grabbed her by her waist, lifted her. Julianne twined her legs around his waist. "Tell him that man I'll pay for his granddaughters' weddings."

Julianne wrapped her arms around his neck as Oliver lifted her higher. She felt him bob against her seam, touch her. Search for her.

"We're going to do it like this?" she asked, looking down into his bright blue gaze, his chisled face inches from hers. His breath beat against her half smile, his thick shoulders supported her arms, his hot, hard torso pressed against her from chest to core.

Oliver swallowed. "It's got to be...complicated, this first time."

"Why?"

"Or else it will go to fast."

Her smile grew. Then faltered when Oliver wrapped an arm around her waist, supported all of her with one muscular arm and grabbed himself to trace her seam. With his jaw grim and his eyes focused on her, he found her softest, wettest spot. And pushed.

The thick tip of him, sliding just inside, against all those little tingly nerves. It was always her favorite part. Or at least, her favorite part before all the other favorite parts to follow. But it was like nothing else, this first brush of him inside her, couldn't be replicated by a finger or a tongue. Julianne felt herself melting over him, around him, as she stared into his hungry blue gaze.

He retreated, slowly, and the slide lit sparklers inside of her. He pushed forward again, deep and slow, until he was home.

Her thighs clenched his hips, his hands gripped her ass, her arms held his neck, his eyes wouldn't let her go. Oliver Queen was inside of her.

"You okay?" he murmured. She nodded, without words. She realized this should have been more difficult. After three years. But she felt herself already fluttering around him.

"Then kiss me." Her heart broke and her body flooded at his pleaded demand and Julianne crushed her arms around his neck to bring his head to hers, to press her lips against that mouth and feel that scruff against her chin and taste his tongue while his hands moved her against him, lifted and lowered and twisted her as a tool to bring him pleasure while sizzling sensation streaked out from her core.

"Fuck," he growled. "You make it too..." He pushed deep into her, wrapped an arm around her waist and pushed her upper torso back from him. "I want one of these." He raised her breast to his mouth and laved the nipple with his tongue.

She held onto his shoulders and offered her body like a sacrifice. Impaled on him, she arched her back and let him kiss and suck her breast, clenched him with her knees and began to move her hips against him. Work that gorgeous man inside her.

"Good," he groaned against her nipple, a vibration she felt all the way down to her bud. "Make my knees weak. I can concentrate on standing up you until you come all over me."

She pulled forward, stuck her tongue in his ear. Which she knew drove him crazy. "Or I can concentrate on holding on until you come all over me."

His hands grabbed her ass so he could slam into her. "Not going to..." He pulled out, slid in hard. "...come all over you." He started to jackhammer inside of her. "I'm going to..." Her core was a vibrating mass of sensation, gripping and squeezing and begging him. "...come inside you." His muscles were flexing and sweat-slicked against her. "I'm gonna fill you up..." A tight, helpless moan began straining from her mouth as her body hovered on the verge. "...so you can't forget that I love you."

As her body exploded against him, it wasn't a pleasured wail that escaped her. It was a horrible sob of loss. She buried her head at his neck and clenched him against her. A cloudburst of tears soaked him above as her body soaked and squeezed him below.

Oliver went stiff. "Oh shit. Julianne." He moved to pull out of her, but she clung tight, sobbing. He rubbed her back instead. "Sweetie, don't cry." He turned and walked them to his massive bed, negotiated their bodies under the covers while still inside her. "It's okay. Please. I'm sorry." On top of her, between her legs, he surrounded her in his arms.

Julianne laid her head back against his pillows. "No, I'm sorry," she said through her tears. "I'm going to miss you. I don't want to leave. I wish I could be with you... I wish..."

"I know," he said, wiping her tears with his calloused thumbs. "I wish, too.

"I'm not strong," she wept. "I don't know how I'm going to do this. I don't know how I'm going to know you're out there in the world wanting me as bad as I want you and not be with you. I'm not strong enough."

"You are," he urged into her ear. "Too my damn annoyance, you are strong enough."

She shook her head. "I'm not. I barely survived losing Jaime. I don't think I can survive losing you, too."

"Fine." His hands wrapped around her wrists clinging to his neck, and he put his strength into unclinging them. "Stay with me." He stretched her arms flat back on his silky sheets, and Julianne blinked the tears from her eyes, confused as she looked up into his hovering face.

"What?" His kindness had been erased by determination, his jaw firm with it.

"Starling City has a prestigious boys prep school. My family paid for a wing, so it won't be hard to enroll the boys mid-year."

His words fell like granite on her ears. "Oliver, what are you talking about?

"Or wait until they graduate. I'll get an apartment in D.C. for my visits."

Julianne was stunned by the turn of events. She tried to wriggle her hands in his hold. But she felt a restraining strength that, for the first time, alarmed her. "Oliver...I'm sorry. But we still can't..."

He swirled his hips and moved inside her, reminding her that he was still hard. The weight of his arms firmed over her wrists. "I can convince you," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger.

Julianne's response was swift. "And I can bite off your dick."

Suddenly, he stopped moving his lower body and his hold relaxed. A warm, encouraging smile grew on the face she knew. "Who said you're not strong enough?" he murmured.

Awestruck, Julianne stared. And then, with a whoosh of breath, her body relaxed beneath him. Her legs bent up to entwine in his.

She breathed in a shaky breath. "Oh God. You're crazy. And I'm a mess."

He let go of a wrist to grab the sheet corner and wiped her face with the softest cotton she'd ever felt. "You had orgasm tears. I give them to woman all the time." He tucked the covers back around them, cocooning them in warmth, and them re-claimed her wrist, settling against her.

"Why are you so good to me?" She looked up into his beautiful face. "Even when you're being so evil."

He leaned down and gently kissed her lips. "There's a darkness in you, because of what you went through, that you're not afraid of. There's a darkness in me, too, that I use when it serves my purpose. That's why we're drawn to each other. We recognize the darkness in each other..."

"And we see someone reaching for the light," Julianne finished.

She tipped her head up, aware that he still held her wrists, aware that he was still hard inside her, and Oliver gave her the long, slow kiss she wanted.

His kisses slipped to her cheek, to the corner of her eye, to her neck. "Do you think he would have liked me?" His question was barely a breath against her ear.

She thought about it for a moment, her beautiful Jaime with her beautiful Oliver, his affable good nature with his more complicated joy and pain, his careful consideration with his swift decision making.

"Yes," she finally decided. "He would have found you fascinating, stimulating to be around. And you..."

"I would have trusted him. I don't trust very many people, but I would have trusted him instantly."

"Yes," Julianne said, refusing to let the tears come to her eyes. Jaime would have liked him very much.

The long kiss Oliver gave her was full of love. The throb of him inside of her was involuntary.

"Let me just..." Oliver began to pull out before Julianne crossed her legs around his ass.

"Don't you dare."

Oliver smiled down at her, the warmth soft in his eyes, as he pushed back inside. Julianne bit her lip at the renewed flutter of sensation. She wriggled her hands. "Let go."

"A couple of minutes," Oliver breathed as he pulled slowly back and then pushed slowly in. "Give me a couple of minutes without your hot, little hands all over me. I'm trying not to embarrass myself."

Julianne grinned and when Oliver pushed again into her wetness, she squeezed him with all she had, earning a groan and a full-body lurch from him. "Goddamn," he muttered.

She rubbed her nipples against his hard chest. "Kiss my breasts," she said. "I love seeing your mouth on them while you move inside me."

Instead, Oliver lowered and took her mouth, destroyed it with deep kisses, punished it for exciting him, probed deep to feed her pleasure just like his hardness was feeding her pleasure below. Julianne tilted up her hips to give him everything he wanted.

"I love your mouth," he groaned against her. "I love your pretty breasts. I love your soft hair and your soft hands and your sleek, soft skin."

"Let me hold you," she begged, their lower bodies pulsing together to get him deep, to take him whole. "Let me hold you."

Finally, finally, he let go of her hands and she frantically wrapped then around his shoulders, caressed his scars and skin, pulled him close to her. He buried his arms beneath her, supporting her as he moved hard inside her, and gathered her head in both of his hands.

Julianne's mouth dropped open helplessly as she felt him swelling inside her, as her head filled with his musk and his heat, as her sweet core began to tremble. Then he stopped. His body was one long piece of hot steel in her arms. The crackle of the fire was the only sound in the room.

She was so glad he'd turned on the lights. She could see everything in the brilliant eyes that looked down at her.

"I'm going to come inside you," he whispered.

"Yes."

"Is there a chance I can make you pregnant?"

"No, I'm on the pill."

"Damn." He was showing her even the shadows in his eyes.

"I know."

In this cocoon they'd made, this private little world they'd explore and never sleep in for the rest of this last date, their eyes met and they let everything they felt for each other shine as Oliver leaned his head down to give Julianne a soft, perfect kiss. "Keep your eyes open."

Julianne nodded and Oliver began to move again.

He moved hard and sure and slow, letting her feel every inch of him, reveling in every bit of her, as his eyes stayed on her, as bright blue mixed with dark brown and promises that couldn't be said were made.

"I will always love...I will never forget...I will always wish joy for you." Vows made with their hands and hips and the sweet surety of love in their eyes. And even as Oliver's fingers gripped her hair and Julianne bit her lips to restrain the scream and their lower bodies began to pound, demanding their will, even then, love showed through the desperation in their eyes.

"Come with me," Oliver groaned, bright blue needing her, and Julianne did. She came and caressed him, crying out, and her Oliver, her sweet, sweet Oliver Queen, groaned and held her tight and poured all of himself into her, all of his misery and joy, all of his darkness and light, and all of his love. It flashed there, in the eyes they wouldn't close even in the craze of pleasure, and Julianne realized he didn't know.

He was made of love.

All he did for her, all he did for his friends and family and the people of Starling City, came not from his darkness or his violence or his need to make amends. It came from love. He didn't know it yet. But he would. And when he made peace with himself, when he realized his vast reservoir of love, he would find a woman to give it to. Julianne gripped him close as she sent up a prayer for that future couple: Give them what Jamie and I had. Give them humor and zest and patience. Give them children. And most of all, give them years and years and years.

Oliver's head slipped to her neck. Julianne stroked his back as he held her tightly, as they trembled together. And in her heart she felt a glow: the confidence of the love of two great men. And a certainty that all of her prayers would be answered.

THE END


	7. Arrow: A Primer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Desperately Seeking" takes place after Season 2 of the Arrow. There are spoilers in this story, so if you are catching up, wait to read this until you finish Season 2. If you do not watch The Arrow, and would just enjoy reading a little love story, then this primer will give you all the info you need to understand what's going on. Enjoy.

Oliver Queen is the spoiled son of billionaires Robert and Moira Queen, the heir apparent to Queen Consolidated, and the prince of Starling City. Oliver was kicked out of every university he attended and although he loves his high school sweetheart, Laurel Lance, he has no problem leaving Laurel behind while he invites her sister, Sara, on a multi-week cruise on the family's yacht.

That cruise changes his life forever.

An explosion rocks the boat, instantly killing Sara, he believes, and sending Oliver, his father and a crewmember out into the open ocean on a life raft. After days without rescue and running out of supplies, Robert tells Oliver his secret: He has failed Starling City. He hands Oliver a notebook. Oliver must survive, he tells him, and use the notebook to right his wrongs. Robert shoots the crewmember and then himself.

Dehydrated, weak and useless, Oliver lands on an isolated island. Quickly, he discovers the island is not deserted. A hooded man who puts an arrow through his shoulder and shows him the first hard lessons of survival becomes his teacher. Later, Oliver learns that black ops teams use the island as a base. Over the course of five long years, Oliver hardens into a man who knows about murder, torture, and surviving the worst evils. His one goal is to get back to Starling City and become the man his father wanted him to be.

Rescued and returned to Starling City, Oliver takes on the mantle of The Arrow, a hooded vigilante who protects the City from those who would do it wrong. Quickly he discovers that he cannot do this job alone. Over the next two years, his team is joined by John Diggle, an ex-soldier with his own vendettas; Roy, who learns the art of fighting and archery from Oliver; Laurel; and Felicity, a beautiful genius who tempts Oliver into doing the one thing he never can do: dream of a life when he's not The Arrow.

In the weeks before our story begins, disaster strikes Oliver's life: An enemy from the island, once a friend named Slade Wilson, has come seeking vengeance. He steals Oliver's company with the help of a seductive young woman. And in front of Oliver and his little sister, Thea, Slade kills their mother. Oliver and his team stop the man before his ultimate act of destroying Starling City, but when Thea discovers that Oliver has lied to her about her biological father, she leaves town believing she can trust no one. Felicity, who up to this point had patiently understood the demands on him, is becoming tired of waiting for Oliver to return her love.

Calm has returned to Starling City and Oliver rests in the uncomfortable lull before the inevitable next storm. When he opens the local paper to the personal ads on a business trip to Washington, D.C., he thinks he's just looking for something to read to pass the time. He's actually looking for something else: an escape.


End file.
